


Getting Out of Fuchsia

by d_s_t_e



Series: The Girl with the Chikorita [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Chansey - Freeform, Chikorita - Freeform, Original Character(s), Pokemon Fanfiction, Seaking, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-05-29 06:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 35
Words: 66,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6362560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d_s_t_e/pseuds/d_s_t_e
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You think your hometown is boring? Try living in Fuchsia City: population 35 and a total of 9 pixilated buildings. All I wanted was to get out of there. I didn’t even care where I ended up as long as it didn’t look like it had been mapped out by a kindergartener with a box of crayons. That was the beginning.</p><p>I knew from the start it wouldn’t be easy. Out on the road, just looking at someone the wrong way could force you back to where you came from, and the woods beyond are filled with creatures known to attack at the slightest provocation.</p><p>Starting out, I thought that I knew everything. But this story is really about everything I didn’t know. The things I never expected to happen, the people I never expected to meet, and the one big surprise I never saw coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I'm camped out in my customary spot, waiting and watching, just like I have every single day for the past two months. When the park opens up at sunrise, I'm the one waiting outside the gate like a shopper on Black Friday. When it closes down for the night, I'm the last one out the door. I've worn a hole in the ground out here, one tiny patch of bare, dirt-covered ground in an ocean of grass.

It's a sweet little place: a tidy row of bushes to one side, a couple of ponds on the other, and plenty of tall grass in between. This is where I'm crouched, watching the long green blades bend and sway in the light breeze. I've got a pile of rocks at my feet and a banana yellow messenger style bag hanging from my shoulder. The spindly shrub I'm hiding behind comes up to my cheekbones, obscuring all but my eyes and the white hat that sticks out like a dorsal fin poking up above the ocean waves. Staying out of sight is one thing; being completely invisible is another. Going camo is the best way to get yourself inadvertently trampled to death.

Luckily, the only creature in sight at the moment is a big gray beast with a horn on its nose. If you can get past the rock-hard skin and the sharp edges on its horn, spikes, and claws, you can see that it has terrible eyesight. It's not too smart, either. Like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, I imagine that it has a brain the size of a ping-pong ball. Not much of a threat. Unless you antagonize it, but you'd have to be a complete idiot to do that.

Even though it's relatively boring to watch that huge expanse of gray lap up water from the pond, it's more action than I've seen some days. It's been a real exercise in patience, coming back here day after day just to watch the wind blow through the grass and ripples spread across the surface of the pond. I've had a few encounters, but I still don't have what I came for. Luckily, for now I've got the money to keep paying the admission, and I'm smart enough not to go running all over the place like some people do, wasting all the precious steps I paid for. When the pedometer says you're done, you're done. Until you fork over the price of a second admission.

As the beast finishes drinking and lumbers away, I play with the ping-pong sized balls in the front pocket of my bag. I hold one in my hand, rolling it between my fingers-now it's white, now it's camouflaged, now it's white again. Lame, I know, but even that seems more interesting than literally watching grass grow. Of course, I am still keeping an eye on that grass, a few seconds of inattention are all that it could take for me to lose my next shot.

Tall grass like this is also a good indicator of wind direction, and it's absolutely vital that I stay downwind of my intended target.

More time passes, and a splash of color catches my eye. Oh, it's just a 'moth. I feel a rush of disappointment. It does make a welcome break to the monotony, though, I must admit. Although I've seen dozens of them before, it's still so strange and wonderful that it's like I'm seeing it for the very first time. It's nearly five feet tall and nearly as wide. One lavender-colored wing alone is bigger than my head. It's hard to believe that wings so delicate and paper-thin could also be that large.

I don't think I've ever seen one this close before; those glassy blue eyes protruding from the sides of its head look way creepier when you can really get a good look at them. As it flies past, tiny purple scales tumble off its wings in a constant shower. Immediately, I pull up the collar of my shirt to cover up my nose and mouth. I know those scales are poisonous, and I don't want to even think about what would happen if I inhaled them.

I'm so busy wondering if the scales will cause any irritation on skin contact that I almost miss it. There's the pink marsupial I've been looking for!

Well, maybe it's not actually a marsupial, but it does have a pouch with a snowy white egg nestled inside. As it waddles over to the pond, I realize that it's the same one I tried to capture earlier this month. The six hair-like extensions on its head and the stumpy tail are both noticeably longer than those on the one owned by Nurse Joy. I contemplate my chances of catching it. They aren't good, but, hey, it's not called a Chansey for nothing.

It's actually not surprising that this is the same one I came across earlier; there aren't that many out there, even here in the Safari Zone. Plus, everyone and their brother wants one because catching it is supposed to bring you luck and happiness. So the Chanseys that are still out there have become very experienced at avoiding capture, like those fish that know exactly how to nibble worms off of your hook without getting caught.

I'm surprised the Chansey doesn't see me here. Maybe it's because it's starting to get dark. Or maybe it's noticed that I don't throw a ball at anything that moves and it doesn't see me as a threat anymore.

Either way it's time for me to step out from behind this shrub and decide what I want to throw at it. By Safari Zone rules, I have three choices: throw it some food and try to catch it while it's eating, hit it with a rock in an attempt to weaken it, or just throw a Safari ball right off the bat. Giving it food would just make it stronger and reduce my already slim chances of catching it, and last time I tried a rock only to watch it run away.

I push the white button on the front of the ball I've been playing with, and it expands to the size of a baseball. I take careful aim, and the ball hits it square in the forehead. The ball pops open. The fat pink marsupial turns into a little beam of light and gets sucked in. The ball snaps shut, but in its energy state that Chansey is still putting up a fight. The ball pulses back and forth on the ground from the force of its struggle, like it's ramming against the walls in a desperate attempt to break free. I notice a crack appear in the surface, and then the ball breaks open. The Chansey pops back into solid form, and the Safari ball lies mangled and useless on the ground.

But for whatever reason, the Chansey turns to look at me. Maybe it really didn't see me before and is wondering which way to run. Quick as a Rapidash, I pull out another ball, jab the button and throw, hoping it'll hit because I really didn't have time to aim.

It looks like it'll miss. I aimed too far to the left. My heart sinks, knowing that, if I lose it now, it may be weeks before I get another chance. But then, at the last second, the Chansey turns its head. The hair-like extensions on its head turn with it, and as the ball continues on its path, it just glances the tip of the longest one. It's enough. The ball pops open, the whole scenario repeats itself, and I'm just standing there, watching it in disbelief.

The little camouflaged ball rocks violently back and forth.

"Don't break, don't break," I'm chanting in my head. Was that a crack? No, it was just a tiny piece of dead grass that got in the way. Finally, the rocking begins to slow, and then I hear the magic sound. It's a light self-satisfied kind of sound, halfway between a ping and a pop that kind of sounds like a protracted "bow." And that's the sound that tells me that I've caught a Chansey at last.

I gently pick up the ball, cradling it in my fingers in the dying light. I can barely believe it, but inside this little Safari ball I have my key to getting out of Fuchsia City at last. I shrink the ball back down to ping-pong size and strap it into one of the pouches on my belt.

I am so out of here.


	2. Taking a Chance on Chansey

As I exit the Safari Zone, my heart is pounding. The key to my freedom, the thing I’ve worked at for the last two months and wished for since the beginning is finally, impossibly, here in the palm of my hand. Inside this little ball-shaped piece of technology, I have captured the elusive pink marsupial that could give me everything I've ever wanted.

But the battle is far from over. I look down at the little camo-colored device I’m holding and wonder about the creature trapped inside. The pink marsupial is resting in the palm of my hand because this thing called a Safari ball managed to accomplish the task it was designed to do. When it hit her, its surface took a reading, locked on, and changed her from solid matter into a collection of energy that could be stored inside a piece of electronics.

Since I’ve never had my body transformed into a bunch of energy, there’s no way I can tell you what that’s like, but if you could take a look inside this Safari ball, there would be a creature called a Chansey running through its circuits and wires, in storage but somehow very much alive. Like in Star Trek when they store people’s patterns in the transporter to beam them from place to place, only this Chansey won’t get “beamed back” until I activate the Safari ball again.

I can keep her inside for as long as I want to, but as soon as I let her out again, she’ll go back to her old self. And then I’m going to have some explaining to do.

I walk past the Safari Zone’s office building, a big poorly designed box of a place, just like all the buildings in this town. It’s got basic aluminum siding painted green and gray, five tiny windows, and a tiled roof that’s completely flat. Other than the fact that the houses of Fuchsia are made of brick, it’s a virtual carbon copy. Congratulations, you’ve just seen Fuchsia City.

As I turn the corner, my own house comes into view. It’s just like all the others, but I’ll admit that there are a few key differences that make it tolerable. For one thing, it actually has a back door. And a small backyard with a pond and a flower garden. Since two out of three of the other houses have back windows that offer nothing more than a stunning view of a wall of rock, I consider myself comparatively fortunate. And when I say two out of three, I really mean it. There are only three other houses in the entire city. You can imagine why I want to get out of here.

I brush my fingers across the smooth, rounded surface of the Safari ball one last time, finally convincing myself that this is actually real before strapping it inside a special pocket built into my belt. Reaching into the pocket two positions over, I pull out another device. Half red, half white. This one’s called a Pokéball. Although it has a slightly different purpose, its function is identical.

Pressing the round white button on the line that separates the red and white halves of the ball, I expand it to the size of a baseball. And then I throw it like one.

The Pokéball pops open in mid air, releasing a concentrated stream of energy that takes on the appearance of a burst of red light, like a laser beam exploding. When the light fades, a small green creature has appeared on the spot where the energy hit the ground. My Chikorita, another creature unique to this world.

Still stuck in midair, the Pokéball closes itself with a snap and continues on its course, falling directly towards the Chikorita. She traces its path with her red eyes, then rises up to meet it, head butting it like a soccer ball back into my waiting hand. I shrink the ball, tuck it back into its pocket, and the process is complete.

“Chika!” the creature says happily.

She doesn’t look a thing like the pink marsupial I just caught. Instead, she’s a little under three feet tall, light green, and four legged. Her most prominent feature is the single, swooping leaf that grows right out of her head. The leaf is a darker green than the rest of her body, the same shade as the tiny ring of leaf buds that circles her neck. She’s also got a tail, so for simplicity’s sake you could think of her as being like a dog except cute and leafy.

A Chikorita is a species of creature, like a dog or a cat. They all share these same basic looks. My Chikorita, specifically, is a girl, which is actually quite rare. Her name is Chica, and she’s distinguishable from other Chikoritas by the Everstone necklace that she wears.

She smiles at me, happy to be out in the sunlight. I smile back, and we continue our walk home side by side.

“Hey, Chica,” I say, “guess what? I finally caught a Chansey!”

“Chikorita!” she exclaims. Like all Pokémon, her speech consists only of the syllables that make up the name of her species, but I can tell that she’s excited by the expression of wonder on her face.

“Chika, chika, chika, chika!” She hops up and down with each repetition, swinging the leaf on top of her head like she can't contain her joy.

Sometimes I wonder how it is that Pokémon can understand our language and that of every other Pokémon in existence, and we humans can only understand our own. Usually only one or two of our human languages at that. And we’re supposed to be the smart ones. But she manages to get her point across.

“I know,” I say. “It’s really exciting. You and I have been waiting for this for so long, but now that it’s happened, I’m kind of nervous.”

“Chika?” Chica asks, clearly meaning something along the lines of “why?”

I hop over the white picket fence that marks the edge of my backyard, and, just like that, I’m standing in the flower garden where Chica and I first met. Chica is too short to be able to go over the fence the way I did, so, instead, she wriggles in through a small hole near the ground. It’s exactly as I imagine she must have gotten in that first time.

Instead of answering her question, I say, “Remember the morning I found you here? I woke up one morning to see if any of the flowers I’d planted had sprouted yet, and I found you instead. As soon as you saw me coming, you ran away!” Chica and I both laugh.

I pause and lean back against the fence. “But then you turned around and looked up at me with those big red eyes, and I just stood still for the longest time, looking back at you. Finally, I went to get my watering can, and when I came back you were gone. But you came back. You came back to my garden again and again, and every time you got a little closer and stayed a little longer. And then we started talking to each other. I told you about myself and my plans to get out of this place, and, well, I guess you decided that hanging out in a little red and white ball might not be so bad if you got to come along with me.”

Chica nods in a way that suggests that she’s wondering where I’m going with this.

“See, when I ‘caught’ you, I didn’t really catch you. You’d already agreed to come along with me. You wanted to go into a Pokeball, but this Chansey I just caught was fighting against it every step of the way, trying to get away from me. What if she doesn’t want to come with us?”

Chica looks up at me with concern from the bed of daisies she’s come to rest in. She says nothing. I'm not really sure what she can say.

There’s a long minute of silence between us.

Pushing off from the fence, I sigh. “There's really nothing I can do, is there? I just won't know until I let her out. And I guess there's no point in standing around here stalling."

Slowly, I lift the tiny Safari ball out of its pouch. As I push the button to expand it, Chica quivers with excitement. My heart is pounding. I take a deep breath. And throw.

The red light fades into the physical form of the familiar pink marsupial known as Chansey. Her body is shaped roughly like an oval, with no legs or hands. Just feet and stubby arms and a sweet little smile. A smile that quickly fades. The Safari ball crashes to the floor behind her.

"Chika!” my Chikorita exclaims, catching the Chansey’s attention. Chica dashes happily over to the ball and in one deft motion she slides her leaf underneath it, flipping it up into my waiting hand.

The Chansey watches Chica with confusion, her eyes tracing the Safari ball’s path back to me. And then they widen in recognition.

“Remember me?” I ask gently.

“Chan,” she says softly. She slowly turns from side to side, examining the yard. When she turns toward Chica, the Chikorita flashes her a huge welcoming smile. She doesn't return it, but she doesn't seem to feel threatened. And she isn't trying to run away.

When she finally turns back to me, her expression is completely calm. Quietly, she places her full attention on me as though waiting for me to speak again.

“So, um, I guess you’ve realized by now that I caught you back there in the Safari Zone. The way the Safari ball hit you right at the tip of your hair, well, if those pink things sticking out of your head actually count as hair, I wasn’t sure whether you saw what was happening.”

The Chansey looks at me with an expression completely unchanged.

I lick my lips nervously. “But I want to let you know right now that I’m giving you a choice in this. If you want to go back to the Safari Zone, I’ll let you go. All I’m asking is that you hear me out first.”

Still no response. Who knew that a Chansey would be so unreadable?

“You see, I’m not one of those trainers who sets out to capture Pokémon just so they can say they did. I’m not on some quest to catch one of every single Pokémon species in existence. I’m not even one of those people who catches as many Pokémon as they can.

“Frankly, I don’t see the point of having any more than six Pokémon. Why have more than the law says that you can take with you? Storing living creatures inside little pieces of technology is weird enough to begin with without taking the energy form stored inside the pokéball and sticking it into a big computer where it can't do anything at all. I’d just feel bad leaving any Pokémon inside there for days or weeks or even months at a time.”

Chansey’s eyes are narrowed slightly. Is that annoyance or interest?

“The truth is, I captured you because I need you.” I pause, considering. “You know what? Why don’t I give you the grand tour?”

Walking up to the back door, I open it and extend my hand, inviting her to step inside. Chica takes advantage of the open door to dash happily inside. Chansey follows slowly, hesitantly, waddling over on her legless feet until she finally takes the first cautious step inside. I close the door behind us and walk into the center of the room, which is also the center of the house.

“That’s right, it’s all one room,” I say, extending my arms towards the walls. “No bedroom, no bathroom, basically, I’m living in a big, poorly designed box.

“This house,” I tell Chansey, “is arranged exactly the way it was when I bought it: a cabinet for dishes, four potted plants, a blue area rug, and a little blue table cloth that doesn’t even stretch over the surface of the table.”

I pause to point out each item in turn, watching as Chansey’s eyes slide over to them one by one.

“What’s up with that? I don’t know, but those are all that the local store will sell me. Well, except for bookshelves, picture frames, and televisions, which I have no use for. I can’t afford a television. I don’t have any books to put on a shelf. And if I want a picture to put inside my frame, I have to paint my own. With paints and brushes they don’t provide.

“Don’t you see?” I ask her, finding myself growing frustrated just by talking about it. “It’s like they don’t even think about what we want or what we need or even about what makes practical sense. I just can’t stand it. Every day it’s something else, some little thing. Like when I get a toothache and there isn’t a single dentist office. Or when it rains and I have to cover everything in plastic and put out pots and pans and buckets because when someone had the brilliant idea to make the roofs flat and tiled, they didn't realize that it would leak. I mean, for Pete’s sake, sometimes I look around and realize that everything is so simple and uniform and square that it actually looks pixilated! It’s just, sometimes it feels like it’s driving me crazy!

“There has to be someplace out there where things actually work the way that they’re supposed to. I need originality and creativity. Complexity. Realism.”

I suddenly realize that I’ve begun pacing. I stop myself and realize that Chansey is looking at me now with… concern. Is she sympathetic to my problem, or does she think that I’m completely crazy?

I sigh.

“Look, what it really comes down to is, Chica and I can’t leave this place without you. The roads nearly impassable unless you’re traveling with a very strong team, and the woods are downright dangerous. But, if you come with us, I think that we could make it.”

“Ka!” Chica agrees, nodding.

“So. Will you come with us?”

I cross my fingers behind my back with both hands, waiting, hoping.

Chansey’s expression is unreadable at first, but, slowly, the corners of her mouth pull up into a smile.

“Chansey,” she chirps sweetly.

Call me crazy, but I think that sounds like a "yes".

"Really?"

"Chansey," she repeats, smiling even wider.

"I can't believe it! There are so many things to do, so much to prepare! I have to pack all my supplies. I have to quit my job. I have to figure out where we're going to go!"

I stop. Where are we going to go? I've spent so much time trying to get my ticket out of here that I haven't thought about it. I mean really thought about it. I thought my plan was perfect, but, now that it's time to put it to the test, I can't help wondering whether it's even very good. None of this is going to be easy. It might not even be safe.

I look at my new Chansey, laughing lightly as Chica dances circles around her on the hardwood floor. I may have won her loyalty for now, but this journey is just getting started.


	3. The Journey Begins

The door closes with a satisfying thud.

"Chica," I say, looking down at my little green friend with a smile, "we are out of here!"

Chica cheers and sets off running so fast that it blows back the leaf on top of her head.

"Woah, wait up!" I call. "We're gonna need to stick together."

She stops at the edge of my former front yard and turns around to throw me a little pout, but she does wait for me to catch up to her.

"My former front yard," I say out loud. "That feels so good to say!"

I'm leaving this house for good. My next door neighbor, the warden of the Safari Zone, agreed to take care of it for me. He can keep it for himself, watch over it in case I come back for a visit, or just sell it for all I care. I'm sure he'll do whatever he thinks is best; he's a nice, honest old guy. Plus I just spent two months pumping all kinds of dough into his park. He should be grateful.

As I reach the edge of the yard, Chica begins to trot along beside me.

"Ka-a!" she complains, clearly urging me to move faster.

I can't help but smile at her enthusiasm. "Ok, fine. Race you to the outskirts of town!"

I cram my hat into my bag so that it won't fly away and take off with legs pumping at full speed, but Chica is off like a rocket. Of course, that's unsurprising. I've always found that four legs are faster than two.

The "outskirts" are about a minute's walk from the yard, so I get there in about 20 seconds. Chica's already waiting for me outside the guardhouse. I tag a sign that reads "Route 15" and slow back to a walk. As we go up the guardhouse steps, I look back and see that the reverse side reads "Welcome to Fuchsia City: Population 35."

I wonder who's running this crazy world. All I know is that if I was in charge around here, I'd do a complete overhaul on the system for naming places. You're probably tired of me picking on Fuchsia, so I'll ignore the fact that 35 people doesn't make a "city" and instead point out the fact that every single path in this region (at least from the maps I've seen) is identified only by a number. It's just plain boring. And who can remember all those numbers, anyway?

Anyway, the guardhouse is a tiny little place: a couple plants, a rug, a welcome mat at each end, and a couple counters for the guards to stand behind. I nod to the guard on duty as I walk through.

"Setting off on a journey, are you?" he asks, eyeing my traveling clothes and the messenger bag I've packed full to bursting with all the stuff I can afford: food, clothes, blankets, a map, my fishing rod, a well-stocked medicine kit, and, of course, some pokéballs. Plus various other equipment, all pretty basic. All those days in the Safari Zone have really drained my available capital.

"Yep," I reply simply. I keep walking, not even slowing down.

He chuckles. "Good luck becoming a 'Pokémon Master'."

"Oh, I have no intention of becoming a Pokémon Master," I inform him, coming to a stop. I want to be sure that all the people in this city have the story straight. "I'm not even going to collect a single Gym badge. There are plenty of people doing that already, and, quite honestly, I don't care about being the best trainer there ever was or being able to win the toughest battles. I just want to do some exploring, see what's out there."

"Ah," the guard nods. "Very practical of you. I kind of like that idea. It's very refreshing after the floods of pie-in-the-sky kids I get trooping through here thinking they're going to defeat the entire world with their Weedles and Pidgeys."

For those of you who are wondering, Weedles are like oversized worms with horns stuck on their heads. Pidgeys are basically pigeons with claws. Neither are very powerful.

"Thank you," I reply.

"You've got the right kind of attitude," he tells me. "So I'm going to ask you something. How strong are the Pokémon you've got with you?"

"Well, first there's Chica, here," I say, gesturing towards her. She's not tall enough to be visible over the counter under normal circumstances, but since we've stopped to chat, she's stretched up onto her back legs and planted her two front feet against the side so that her head is sticking up. She gives the guard a smile.

"I've had Chica for a while, but she was pretty young when I first got her, so she doesn't know a lot of attacks yet. I did use her to catch a Seaking, but, of course, I can only use him when we're near water."

Seaking is basically a giant goldfish. With a horn.

"And, finally, I have a Chansey. I just caught her in the Safari Zone yesterday, so I really have no idea how powerful she is. I'm hoping powerful enough."

The guard nods. "In that case, let me give you some advice. The road out there is packed with trainers itching for a battle, and their Pokémon are tough. If you let them get a piece of you, you won't make it twenty feet. Don't look any of them in the eye, or they'll force you into a battle."

"Crazy tradition," I mutter under my breath.

"Try to make it through without fighting anyone," the guard continues, "but if you do end up pitting your Pokémon against someone else's, you need to make sure that you don't lose. Once they see you as a target, they'll start circling like a bunch of hungry Sharpedos."

For the uninitiated, that would be sharks. Sharks that have caught the scent of blood.

"And whatever you do," he cautions seriously, "don't spend any more time in the woods than you have to."

* * *

The road beyond the guardhouse is long and straight, stretching eastward from Fuchsia City to the sea. It's basically the Pokémon world's version of an interstate, but, when it comes right down to basics, it's really nothing more than a wide dirt path, flanked by a thin strip of grass on one end and forest on the other.

And it is littered with Pokémon trainers: on the grass, in the road, walking past, "accidentally" bumping into me. I hate Pokémon trainers.

Ok, I should clarify that. A Pokémon trainer technically is anyone who keeps Pokémon inside these little pokéballs. I'm a Pokémon trainer. The problem is that the term has basically become synonymous with a Pokémon battler, someone who trains their Pokémon to fight.

I train Chica and my other Pokémon to be strong fighters for the purposes of self defense. These Pokémon trainers teach their Pokémon to fight in order to pit them against someone else's Pokémon for sport. And they would like nothing more than to sic their Pokémon on mine until Chica and my new Chansey both faint from their injuries. So that they can declare victory.

And if I look any of these people in the eye, tradition states that such a battle must be fought. Which is why, when the girl in the green running shoes bumps into me for the third time today, I grit my teeth and fight back the impulse to deliver an angry outburst to her face. If I look up, she wins.

"Oops, sorry," she says, in a tone of voice that's clearly not at all sorry.

I keep my eyes focused on her shoelaces as, without a word, I step to the side and walk past her. I am not having a good time of it.

Chica, on the other hand, is having the time of her life. She darts all over the path, often pausing to roll around in patches of flowers by the side of the road while she waits for me to catch up. Between her light green skin and the leaf on her head, she looks so much like a plant herself that you could confuse her for one of them if she wasn't running around with such excitement. She's barely looking where she's going, and she has several close calls at running into a ledge or tripping on a rock. I could put her back in her Pokéball, but she's enjoying herself way too much. Besides, just watching her cheers me up a little.

I catch her eye, smile, and start walking faster, inviting her to race. Let's see that girl try to bump into me when I'm running at full speed. Maybe if I knock her to the ground, she really will be sorry. And everyone else will be smart enough to get out of the way of the girl who isn't looking where she's going.

Chica's face takes on an even greater look of excitement at the suggestion. She eagerly bounces up from the grass and starts running along the edge of the path. But, before she gets three steps, she bashes into the side of a motorcycle. A motorcycle that I hadn't seen because I was staring at the dirt.

"Ka!" Chica cries out in pain as her head snaps back. She falls to the ground, landing on her belly with her four short legs splayed outwards.

I run over to see if she's alright. In a sudden burst of concern for her, my eyes snap up. It's just my luck that in a single momentary lapse I've managed to lock eyes with a biker dude. And he looks angry about the fact that a Chikorita just crashed into his spokes. His stupid bike obviously did more damage to Chica than she did to it, but biker dudes are the type to take everything as a personal affront.

"You'll pay for that," he growls as he pulls out a Pokéball.

And now it's on. I meet his challenge with an expression as cold as an Icebeam, firmly standing my ground as a crowd begins to gather. If I were thinking clearly, I might be worrying about my chances of defeating him right about now, but I am much too angry to be thinking clearly. He will be the one to pay.

The biker dude releases his Pokémon from its ball. I'm not surprised to find that he's a Koffing kind of guy. The disgusting purple gasbag of a Pokémon matches perfectly with the biker dude's dirty leather jacket, Mohawk, and poisonous personality. Not to mention the ugly sneer that reveals tobacco-stained teeth.

This is not the opponent I had wanted for my first real battle. He's not even a person I would have wanted to run into, but that knowledge only fuels my desire to defeat him.

I can't stand the thought of losing to this guy, and not only because if I lost I'd have only 10 Pokédollars to give him as prize money (another crazy tradition, having the loser of a Pokémon battle actually pay money to their opponent). What would I say then, "Sorry, I spent all the rest trying to catch a Chansey. I won't be getting my last paycheck until next week so... Do you mind if I write you an IOU?"? I'm sure he's exactly the kind of guy who would be kind and understanding! Especially given the fact that Chansey's pink color and sweet personality have given it a reputation as a "girly" Pokémon.

We have to fight against this Koffing with everything we've got, but one whiff of the putrid gases leaking out of that crater-filled balloon that he calls a Pokémon tells me that Chica would be no match for it. She's gotten back to her feet and doesn't seem to be hurt, but grass and poison don't mix well. She's covering her nose with the end of her leaf already.

I pull out her Pokéball and point it at her. Red light surrounds her, breaking her back down into energy before pulling her into the device for storage. I shrink the pokéball and put it back into its slot on my belt, weighing my options.

I don't see any nearby ponds, so Seaking's out. Unless I want him to flop around uselessly until he passes out from lack of water. That would be real helpful.

I don't have any other choice. I call out Chansey.

When she pops out, the first thing Chansey does is look from left to right in confusion. The pokéball drops to the ground behind her. It stays there.

I grimace. Not the best way to start a battle. Especially since I can tell that Chansey's disgusted by the very sight of the gaseous purple monstrosity I've pitted her against. Her second time out of her Pokéball, and this is what I'm asking of her? Pokémon battles aren't exactly a walk in the park for the Pokémon who have to fight them. Especially for a Pokémon like Chansey.

You see, every Pokémon has different, well, basically powers, called attacks. In a battle, the trainer's job is to tell the Pokémon which ones to use when, so each one has a special name. It's kind of like coaching a sports team by yelling out plays from the sidelines. Each Pokémon has their own play book according to what their species can do and how strong the individual is.

In Chansey's case, though, there aren't a lot of choices. As a species, they just don't have a wide variety of attacks. At my Chansey's level of experience, the only good one she's bound to know is called Doubleslap. And since Chanseys aren't exactly built for offense, it's not very powerful.

I look at the Koffing, wondering if she'll be able to defend herself against it, let alone defeat it. I swallow hard.

"Hey!" the biker dude calls. "You going to call your first attack or run away home like a frightened little Skitty?"

I take a deep breath, controlling the anger so that I can think.

"We'd better go with Tailwhip," I tell Chansey.

She looks back at me questioningly, but obliges, turning her pudgy, egg-shaped body to the side and wiggling her stumpy little pink tail in the direction of the Koffing. No, that's not some kind of Pokémon insult. It's designed to give the opposing Pokémon the idea that Chansey is cute and completely harmless so it'll let its guard down. It does no damage whatsoever.

The biker dude just laughs. "Is that all you've got?" He runs his fingers through his greasy Mohawk as he commands his Koffing to use Sludge.

It hovers across the field, opens its mouth wide and spews a disgusting vomit of purple goo all over poor Chansey. It might not look like much of an attack, but no one really knows what could be in that stuff. Only its trainer knows where that Koffing's been and what disgusting rot it's eaten. My eye sweeps over an apple core and a blackened banana peel, and those probably aren't close to being the worst things in there. Koffing isn't called a poison Pokémon for nothing; whatever's in it, the glop's a serious irritant to the skin and eyes. The smell alone could be enough to make a Pokémon faint if enough of it accumulates.

"Tailwhip again, Chansey," I order reluctantly.

Chansey obediently repeats the gesture. Gobs of foul-smelling goo fly off her tail as she flicks it back and forth.

The biker dude repeats his previous move as well. A fresh coat of sewage drops. Koffing licks its lips, its half-circle eyes narrowed even further in a smirk as it hovers directly over Chansey's head. I can tell that she's really starting to take a hit.

"Use Softboiled," I tell her anxiously. Thanks to Chansey's special healing powers, the move gives her an extra boost of strength, but the biker dude's Koffing takes the opportunity to splatter on even more from the apparently never-ending storage of disgusting material lodged in the pit of its stomach.

By now, Chansey's surrounded by a pile that's up to her eyeballs. She sways back and forth, trying to pull her head out of it. Slime drips from the tip of each hairlike outgrowth. The revolting smell of it is even starting to get to me. I'm practically choking with every breath.

How much more can she take? How many more orders will she follow before she loses faith in me completely? If I fail to get through to her now, the battle will be lost. And far more than the battle.

"Ok, Chansey, you've got to trust me on this," I plead. "Use Tailwhip one last time."

The biker dude laughs uproariously. "You call this a battle? Here, I'll take it easy on you. Koffing, use Tackle."

Tackle. The weakest attack that Koffing can use that still does damage.

The Koffing backs up to the opposite edge of the path, then glides back across to hit Chansey with a head butt. Of course, Koffing is all head, so you could probably also call it a body slam.

It's so lightweight that it bounces off easily. But Chansey's reaction? I blink, wondering if I can believe my eyes. My Chansey looks angry.

"Chance!" she practically growls at the Koffing, curling back her upper lip savagely.

I have never in my life seen sweet, caring Chansey, world renowned for her ability as a healer and a nurse, lose her temper over anything. A Chansey is gentle and patient. A Chansey would never want to hurt anyone. I wonder... I wonder if that's why they're never able to properly attack?

"Alright, Chansey," I say. "Let me see that Doubleslap."

"See!" Chansey approves.

She's up and out of the sludge pile so quickly it's as if it was no more obstacle than empty air. As fast as her nonexistent legs will carry her, she dashes across the path, hoists up one stick thin pink arm, and slaps the Koffing ferociously.

Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! SLAP! Straight across the face. Left side, right side, left side, right side. The Koffing's head jolts back and forth like a person watching a tennis match at ten times the normal speed. The final blow hits so hard that it's left reeling, wobbling dizzily through the air.

And Chansey does not look one bit sorry for it. She stops, pulls back half a step, and stares down that Koffing down as if to say, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

The biker dude is looking at his Pokémon for the first time with a bit of concern, perhaps regretting that he didn't consider the effect all those Tail Whips were having on his Koffing's defenses. But as soon as it stops spinning, he shrugs it off. "We'll just use smokescreen."

Thick columns of smoke spew out from every crater in the Koffing's body. Other nearby trainers start shooting him dirty looks between bouts of coughing. The smoke quickly obscures the path. Obviously, his plan is to hide the Koffing so Chansey can't find it.

"Doubleslap," I order offhandedly, and Chansey springs into action as if the Koffing's location on the path had been burned into her brain. Through the smoke, I hear the sound of five more slaps connecting solidly. And I know, oh, I know that we have got this now.

When the smoke clears, Koffing is no longer floating. It's lying on the ground with its eyes closed. Fainted. In battle terms, that means we win.

The biker dude holds up Koffing's Pokéball to send it back in. He growls at us, "You're lucky my other Pokémon got injured by the last guy who tried to mess with me. That Chansey of yours got lucky, but there's no way it could have held out against three Pokémon!"

I'm sure he's right, but as he hands me 560 Pokédollars in prize money and rides off to heal his precious Poison types, I feel pretty good.

Even better because the crowd of trainers watching us has seen that I'm no easy target.

"That's right," I say loudly, "there's plenty more where that came from, so you just stay away from me. I'm in a hurry, and I don't have time to waste defeating weaklings like you."

As they slowly disperse, I really hope they bought it because we weren't just lucky, we were insanely lucky. By all rights, that shouldn't have even been possible. Maybe luck comes to beginners, but one thing I know about it is that it can't be pushed. With a single Chikorita, an injured Chansey, and a fish, the next battle I get into will be a losing one.


	4. A Night in the Forest

"I must have chosen a good day to start traveling," I think as Chica and I quietly sneak past the huge group of trainers assembled on the opposite side of the path.

I haven't seen more than five other trainers since my battle with the biker dude, and now I know why. Some big hotshot has chosen today to begin his training for the Indigo Plateau Conference by defeating every single trainer on Route 15 one after the other. I guess people don't mind losing to a guy who might end up becoming the Pokémon League Champion, the winner of the biggest Pokémon battling tournament in the entire region.

He's exactly the kind of guy that people in this world are drawn to. Even those whose Pokémon are too weak to challenge him look on in awe. In their eyes, he is someone to be admired, a hero even. This is the kind of guy that legends are written about.

But I don't care about any of that. I'm just grateful that he's capable of providing such a monumental distraction. I finally make my way past his huddle of eager spectators and admirers and glance back nervously to see if anyone has noticed. Nothing. Their backs are all completely turned.

Chica and I share a smile. The end of the route is finally in sight. I can smell the fresh sea air. After walking all day without even a lunch break, it's a relief to step onto that pebbled beach and look out to the endless calm of the ocean waves. Finally, we're alone.

I pull off my socks and tennis shoes and walk up to the edge. As the water washes over my toes, I let fly the pokéball containing Unicorn. He materializes directly in the surf, casting out a wide ripple of displaced water that brings his special Lure Ball floating right back to me.

A Lure Ball is another of the several varieties of pokéball that exist. Like Chansey's Safari Ball, a Lure Ball serves a special purpose. Specifically, it works best on Pokémon caught while fishing. Lure Balls are incredibly useful for water Pokémon because, as you might have realized, it can be incredibly annoying to have to retrieve a pokéball that doesn't float from the bottom of the ocean.

And, yes, I named my Seaking Unicorn. I think the name is quite clever. Seaking really is the unicorn of the goldfish world. It's primarily orange, with huge, blank eyes and flowing white fins. Its tail fins have black dots spattered on them, and they're shaped kind of like butterfly wings. The fin on its head looks remarkably like a horse's mane, and, of course, it's got a horn.

Technically, Seaking are suited to rivers, but they can take saltwater as well, for short amounts of time, and that's all we need right now.

I release Chansey from her Safari ball, watching as she materializes in the same poisonous goo covered state that she was in at the end of the battle with the Koffing.

"Watersport, Unicorn," I order, and immediately a small stream of fresh water shoots out of his fanged mouth and onto Chansey.

"See," she sighs happily as the last bits of sludge slowly wash away. As soon as Unicorn's done, I point his pokéball at him, and he disappears inside it.

Chansey smiles at me. Surprisingly enough, she doesn't seem at all angry at having been forced to battle and subsequently covered in slime.

"Sorry about that," I say, "I didn't mean to challenge the guy. He was being a jerk after Chica bumped into his stupid bike."

Chansey doesn't seem to be blaming me at all; she's just listening patiently. Reading the expression on her face, it looks like she trusts me completely.

"Wow, it really was a great day when I found you," I say. "Sweet and helpful and a real fighter to boot. I didn't expect to find all that in a Chansey. Say, what do you think of the name 'Serendipity'?"

"Chansey," she chirps. Well, that meant "yes" last time; I see no reason to start believing any different. Serendipity it is.

As I look up, I notice that the sun has gotten pretty low in the sky. It's about time we started to set up camp, and that means going into the forest.

"It's too bad this beach is so thin, or we could just stay here all night," I remark to Chica and Serendipity.

I lead them back to the path and on into the first trees of the forest. We keep walking until we find a spot that's far enough in to be obscured from prying eyes while also being close enough that we can see the way back to the path.

Exhausted, I take a seat on a small rock and pull out the salad I had prepared for lunch. Still waddling along on her flat feet, Serendipity slowly catches up to us. Meanwhile, Chica is darting around like a maniac, collecting dry sticks and kindling in her mouth and arranging them into piles. After a long day in the sun, she doesn't seem hungry in the least. I'm no scientist, but from what I've observed, it seems that Chikoritas have the ability to photosynthesize: to make their own food from sun and water like plants.

I quickly scoop up the last bit of lettuce and turn my attention to the task of starting a fire. The sooner we get one going, the better. The light of a fire is the only known way to prevent wild Pokémon from coming into your campsite in the middle of the night. The last thing we want is a giant green thing with swords for arms stumbling around in the dark. Yes, literally swords for arms. And it might not even be the worst thing out there.

I arrange the sticks into a nice tepee shape, add a few bits of crumpled paper to the kindling, and light it with a match. Success!

"Go us," I say, extending my hand, palm up.

Chica slaps her leaf down on top of it in a high five. All of our months of preparation seem to be paying off. Maybe this won't be so bad after all.

"Hey, Serendipity, you hungry?" I ask.

The Chansey nods. I can't blame her; I'm still hungry, too, and I didn't do battle with a poisonous balloon monster.

The sun has fully set now, but I can still see my bright yellow messenger bag by the light of the fire. I walk over the place where I left it beside the rock and reach inside.

"Woah!" I yank my hand out and jump back. "Did you see that?"

Something inside that bag just shook.

Chica circles the bag cautiously with her eyes narrowed, preparing to defend us against whatever form of danger might be stowed away inside.

Another one of Chica's plant-like attributes is her scent. Just like a flower, she has her own unique mix. How to describe it? . Lavender maybe. Mixed with sweet peas. But her scent changes with her mood: Strong and sweet when she's happy, cloying when she's in the worst of moods, overpowering to the point of causing drowsiness when she's scared. I think she has some conscious control over it, as well, because right now it smells almost intoxicating. I find myself facing an almost irresistible urge to get closer to it. Chica must be trying to lure it out.

For a long moment, nothing happens. Then, I hear a rustle of leaves in the forest behind us. Chica, Serendipity, and I whip our heads around to see what caused it, only to be met by the sound of rustling canvas from a point much closer.

When we turn around, my messenger bag is lying on its side with the flap open. Whatever was in there, it's gone now.

"It was probably just a Rattata," I say, trying to reassure myself. "Just a little purple rat, nothing to be worried about."

But my sandwiches are gone, I realize upon closer inspection. Rats.

* * *

The next morning, I wake up feeling somehow even more tired than when I went to bed. Serendipity and I took turns all night watching over the fire (Chica, being highly flammable, was mostly just afraid of it). When I wasn't trying to drown out the hooting of 'owls and the low, far-off cries of creatures unidentifiable in order to get some sleep, I was sitting on my rock, piling more wood on the fire with bleary eyes as shadowy forms raced through the trees beyond.

Now, I'm meeting the first rays of sunlight with a sigh of relief. Not that it averts any danger, but, at least now we'll be able to see something coming. If it does decide to.

I've already packed up the tarp I set up as a temporary shelter and all the other little things we'd left here and there. As soon as we have breakfast, we'll be ready to head out.

And, boy, do we have a treat for breakfast. At last I'm going to have a taste of a legendary Chansey egg.

What? You don't think I should eat a Chansey egg? It's not like a baby Pokémon is going to pop out of it any second now. You eat chicken eggs, don't you? It's the same concept. Chansey eggs are meant to be eaten, which is one of the reasons that it was so important to have one for this journey. You have to be able to get food from somewhere, and foraging can be tricky. One bad mushroom and you could be poisoned. Or under attack by a band of formerly well-camouflaged Parasects. (Ha, ha. Yeah, that's funny because Parasects look like giant mushrooms. Except, you maaaaybe didn't get that...)

I pull a small collapsible grate and a pot out of my bag and set them up over the fire. Well, really the pot had been tied to the outside of the bag, as it was too large to fit inside. Not terribly fashionable, but highly practical.

There's an egg sitting on the ground not too far away, which means that Serendipity must have laid an egg sometime while I was asleep, but... hm. Where am I going to get water to boil it? Does it matter whether an egg is boiled in salt water or fresh?

Ah, what's the difference? I leave my bag next to the fire, pick up the pot, and walk the short distance back to the ocean. I dunk the pot in the water... Didn't I read somewhere that when you're drawing water it's safest to draw it up from as deep down as you can get it? Something about bacteria maybe. But I can't see any way to get the pot down deeper without getting totally soaked. Besides, I'm going to boil it, so that should kill germs. It might be a little sandy, but who cares? It's not like we're going to drink it.

As I step back into our campsite, I see that Chica has finally woken up to greet the rising sun. Upon hearing my footsteps, Serendipity is stirring as well.

"Hey, do you mind if Chica and I try some of that egg?" I ask her, pointing to the one near her feet.

"Chansey," she chirps accommodatingly and immediately returns to her nap. This Pokémon sure says "yes" a lot. I like it!

That egg looks a lot bigger than I remember. I slosh a bit more of the water out of the pot; don't want it to accidentally overflow and put out the fire. I set the pot carefully on the grate and wait for the water to come to a boil.

In the meantime, I take another look at the egg. As I said before, it's pure white. It's also huge. I wish I had a measuring tape or a ruler or something. It looks almost a foot tall! I carefully pick it up, accidentally snagging a few blades of grass between my fingers as I do so. It's heavy, too. For the sake of all you readers, I'll compare it to an ostrich egg. Never seen an ostrich egg? I challenge you to go out and buy one somewhere. Feel how heavy it is, then crack it open and watch the gigantic yolk and endless streams of egg white pour out. Make yourself an omelet, or ten, and then you'll be able to understand what I'm going through right now.

The egg is so big that it won't even fit in the pot now that the water's boiling. The top third of it is sticking out over the rim like the tip of an absurd glacier. Ok, don't panic. I'll just have to flip it over somehow, after it's had time to cook halfway.

Chica walks up and stares at the pot.

"Chikaaaaah," she says in awe. I'm sure that but for her fear of fire she would have walked right up and inquisitively poked the warm white shell with the tip of her leaf.

She turns to me questioningly, but I have no time to explain. I'm in the process of dumping the entire contents of my messenger bag out onto the blanket Chica had been sleeping on.

"Ok, don't panic," I tell myself again as I shift through the contents. Of course, talking to myself is useless; everyone knows that telling yourself not to panic is a sure sign that you're already panicking.

What can I use to flip that egg? A spoon? A stick? This bit of rope? Ok, now I'm just getting ridiculous. Suddenly the solution pops into my frenzied brain. I grab a couple of forks and dash back to the fire, hoping that I'm not too late.

I put one fork on each side of the egg, apply pressure, and slowly pull it out of the pot. Drops of boiling hot water run down the sides and fall to the ground while I slowly rest the egg on the far edge of the pot. It threatens to tip over from the weight. Slowly, I pull the top edge of the egg towards myself, using the forks to avoid any chance of burning myself. The steam is starting to make my arms uncomfortably hot, but the smaller end of the egg is finally tilted towards me enough that I can let the egg slide back into the pot top-down. As it slides, I relieve the pressure from the forks so that they gently slide up the surface of the shell. The egg finally comes to rest on the bottom of the pot. It's tilted a little, but not dangerously so.

I heave a sigh of relief at last and turn to Chica, who's been watching transfixed. I trudge away to reorganize the mess that is now my stuff and to grab a plate. As soon as I think the egg's ready, I use the fork trick again to pull the egg onto the plate. Then I get back to repacking while I wait for it to cool.

Chica helps as best she can, which basically means scooping little things up with her leaf and tossing them to me. As soon as we're done, I start setting up breakfast. I peel the shell off the egg and cut it into sections. One for me, a small one for Chica, and one last section wrapped up to give to Unicorn later.

That's just the way it goes sometimes in the Pokémon world. One day you're battling disgusting purple gasbags, the next you're nearly defeated by a stupid egg. It's not all glamour and glory, I guess.

It's not the best-cooked egg ever by a long shot, but it has to be the most delicious egg I've ever tasted! So fresh! And the flavor is indescribably good.

"Serendipity, this is excellent!"

"Chi!" Chica exclaimed as quickly as possible before going back to devouring her portion.

Serendipity just smiles.


	5. The Fence

Chica is even more exuberant than usual. Of course, I'm not exactly dragging either. Is it the fresh seaside air, or is it that Chansey egg we just ate?

We're travelling directly northward along Seaside Path. Isn't it weird how all the paths are completely straight: either east-west or north-south?

Anyway, the sea's to my right and a there's a row of trees to my left. I'm walking on the far right side of the path so I can be close to Chica, who is, of course, romping through the wildflowers next to the beach. Serendipity is back in her Safari ball because she was having trouble keeping up. Besides, one Pokémon on the loose is enough to keep track of.

At the rate we're travelling, it's no time before the space to our right narrows and Chica is forced to share the path with me. The ocean is so close now. I'm watching the waves crash down and slowly flow back out. It's almost hypnotic. Even though Fuchsia City is close to the ocean, I've never really seen it until now. All the beaches in existence seem to be infested with trainers who hog up all the space and don't respect anyone who's not also a trainer. And, of course, if you are a trainer, they take joy in beating you to a pulp. Unfortunately, in the Pokémon world, beaches aren't exactly places to relax and soak up some sun.

This stretch of path, though, is completely devoid of pesky trainers waiting to ambush passersby. Maybe it's because the space between the tightly packed trees and the sea is too narrow to allow for lingering. So I watch the waves, absorbing their movements. In. And out. In. And crashing against an incoming wave. In. And out again.

It's wonderful, but all too soon it's over. Forest briefly overtakes both sides of the path, and we emerge to see... a maze. Rows of fences, scattered openings, trainers all over the place. I groan at the sight of it.

"Chi-kaa," Chica suggests. I can't understand her of course, but my guess is that she's saying now would be a good time for lunch. I agree.

I turn off to the left, where there's a little field. While Chica rolls happily in the clover, I lay out a blanket. As I peer into my bag, I see that there's not much food left. Pulling out the map, I can see that we've still got a ways to go. Chica's obviously not hungry, but it might be best if Serendipity could fend for herself. She was living in the wild until a few days ago, after all. She should know how to feed herself. When I let her out of her ball I tell her as much.

She walks off into the trees a little ways in search of food, and I pull out the one sandwich our late night visitor graciously left behind. We're going to need to find some more water soon. Not just because Unicorn's probably getting tired of the inside of a pokéball, but also because my canteen is getting pretty light. This isn't good. We're still over a day's journey away from the next town. If we can't find more food and water, we'll be in serious trouble.

After wandering around in the woods for a while, Serendipity returns. She pops a few berries into her mouth and drinks from the cup I set out for her. Ah, so that's what wild Chanseys eat.

I look back at the maze and sigh. Not much reason to stall now. Even Chica's getting antsy. I return Serendipity to her pokéball, fold up the blanket, and run my eyes over the rows of fences. Of course, the trainers have staked out all the prime spots, so there's no way to go around the way you're supposed to without bumping into at least a few of them. That means multiple battles just to get through. Even if I could beat them all, I am so not interested. With food and water running as low as they are, I can't afford to waste my time. I especially can't afford to lose all the way out here. Without any Pokémon in fighting shape, I would be completely defenseless.

No, I've got something else in mind.

"Sorry, Chica, you're going to have to go back in, too," I say, holding up her Pokéball.

"Chi-ka-ri-ta," she pouts.

"Don't worry, it's not for long. I'll let you right back out as soon as I get past this."

She puts a question on her face, but I don't bother answering before I turn the ball to face her. She beams back in, I shrink the ball, and now I'm ready to do this.

Directly ahead, to the right of the path, is a way-too-obvious dead end. No one's even bothered to stake it out; anyone with eyes isn't going to look at it twice. Except me.

I run straight into it, sprinting at top speed. And when I reach the end of the fence, I jump it like a hurdle. I ignore the shouts that have suddenly erupted behind me and focus ahead. There's a trainer standing in my path. Looks like a bird keeper.

No choice but to hop right on top of the white picket fence to my right and keep going. Step carefully now. The slightest loss of balance, a single misplaced foot, would send me tumbling. Luckily, there's a long hedge conveniently placed on the opposite side. It's almost as if it was put there specifically with this kind of behavior in mind, although the aforementioned shouts seem to indicate that what I'm doing is completely inconceivable. Lighten up, people! You'd think I was breaking a law or something.

Thanks to my superb sense of balance, I'm quickly gaining speed on top of the fence. Coming up is the gap where the bird keeper is standing. Maybe he hasn't heard the shouting, maybe he's just a creature of habit, but he's facing away from the hedge, directly into the maze. It's completely to my advantage that he's not looking this way at all. Bird keeper in three, two, one... And I leap directly over his head! It's also to my advantage that he's short.

I clear the human obstacle with room to spare, but as I come crashing down to the next fence, I lose my footing. Well, that hedge certainly is helpful. A bit scratchy, though.

Oh, well, no time to treat those cuts right now. I scramble back over the fence, and it's a long run at another hurdle. Leap! And cleared! And the picnicker girl has turned from her usual position to watch, but she's too stunned to challenge me to a battle. Not that I'd stop long enough for her to get the words out, anyway. Past a final opening, and I'm in a lane all to myself. A small sign nailed to my left reads "Route 13/ North to Silence Bridge," and I know I'm home free.

Still, I don't stop until my feet hit the wooden walkway. I stay standing just long enough to keep my promise to Chica. Then I sink to the ground, gasping for breath. I allow myself a small sip of water. My hands are coating the slats of wood with sweat.

"Chika?"

"Hurdle cleared," I explain between breaths. Man, that felt good!

* * *


	6. Everybody Loves Unicorn

Boiling a Chansey egg is much easier in a larger pot. Too bad a pot like this one is too big to haul around on our travels.

The fishermen are still snoring away, as is Serendipity. Chica, on the other hand, is completely occupied making faces at Unicorn through the glass of the tank.

"Chikaaaa," she says, stretching her mouth out as far as it will go.

Unicorn does not seem amused. He turns his big goldfish eyes on me, looking for help.

"Oh, lighten up, Unicorn," I tell him, laughing. "She's just trying to have some fun."

Chica turns to smile at me before going back to her game.

I drain the water from the pot and begin cutting up the egg. Smaller portions all around, but we have to demonstrate our thankfulness to our hosts somehow. Sharing a bit of our food with them is the least I can do. By now, they're awake.

"Do you always hard boil your Chansey eggs?" fisherman number one asks.

"I thought it would be better for Unicorn," I reply. "No grease from frying it."

"I have specially made fish food right here," fisherman number two says, yawning. "I'm sure he'd appreciate a special treat."

I frown. It could be my imagination, but it seems as though he's saying that Unicorn would prefer his food to the bit of Chansey egg I prepared.

"Fish food and Chansey egg, my, my, Unicorn's being spoiled today," fisherman number one cuts in quickly. "Do you mind if I feed him?"

"Go right ahead," I reply.

Unicorn swims up to the surface and grabs the piece of egg right out of his fingers before he can get a chance to drop it in the water.

"Sea," he says contentedly, smacking his lips.

"Still not a bit shy," fisherman number one laughs.

"You remember him?" I ask.

"Oh, yes. How could I ever forget him? But more about that later." He winks at me for the second time since I've gotten here. Unicorn is spying out at him suspiciously from his position inside the tank, but it seems that the fisherman is carefully keeping something just between the two of us.

"Yes, yes, I promised you some of my brother's special food," he says, pretending that this must be the source of Unicorn's suspicion, as opposed to his secretive talk. As soon as the large ball-shaped pellets hit the water, however, all traces of Unicorn's suspicion completely disappear. Like all fish, it seems that he can only focus on one thing at a time, and when food is involved, there's no contest. He sucks up the pellets eagerly.

Fisherman number one flashes me another knowing smile and returns to the table to set into his portion of the egg.

It's not long before breakfast is over and everything is packed. My canteen is full, the dishes have been washed, and fisherman number two has already gone off to "catch the world's largest Magikarp!"

As I return Serendipity and Unicorn to their pokéballs, I wonder why on earth anyone would want to exude so much effort on a Magikarp. Maybe he thinks a huge Magikarp will evolve into an especially large Gyrados?

"Do Magikarp get larger as they age?" I ask fisherman number one. Perhaps a larger Magikarp will evolve sooner?

"All fish do," he replies, "But that's not the point for my brother."

"What is the point then?"

"Not a clue," he says happily. "Listen though, you were wondering about Unicorn?"

"Yes?"

"I remember him all right. Most of the Goldeen in that pond caught on to me after a while. There are only so many times you can get hooked before you realize that it's not a good idea to take the bait. Your Unicorn, though, kept coming back for more. No matter how many times I caught him, he'd be right back again the second I cast in my line. It got so I was so tired of seeing him that just catching him wasn't good enough anymore. I started to battle him before I threw him back. At first, I thought it might teach him a lesson. Then it turned into more of a game for me. He just kept trying."

"So he won a few times? Is that how he gained enough experience to evolve?"

"Won? No," the fisherman replied, laughing. "But why should winning have anything to do with gaining experience in battle? Often in life, failure teaches more than victory ever could. I went easy on him, gave him a chance to try out his maneuvers, just to change things up a bit. I didn't realize he'd gained enough experience to evolve from, though."

"So why didn't you tell me any of this earlier?" I ask.

"Because there are two possible conclusions to draw. First, your Seaking is a tough, determined little fish. In that case, you should be proud to have him. The second possibility, though, is that he simply didn't realize the link between the bait and the battle."

"So, you're saying that if he's not tough and determined, he might be just plain stupid."

"You're the one who said it," he smiles.

* * *

We've been walking down the boardwalk all morning since leaving the fishermen's house behind. It's been much the same as yesterday. Warm sun, some Magikarp swimming along the shore, a few fishermen staring out into the water with single-minded determination.

Now, at last, there's a guardhouse in sight. The boardwalk has been nice and all, but I'm ready to see Vermillion City. Apparently, I've been going down Route 11 now. It's pretty short and boring. No real name for it except Vermillion Lane.

So, into the guardhouse, with Chica following happily, as usual. This guardhouse is much the same as the last, except that there are two guards instead of one.

I may have forgotten to mention this before, but the guardhouses are there for a reason. They're nice, sure, like little "Welcome to Our City" grand entryways. They do always have a little rack of brochures advertising the local spots, and the guards are always willing to give friendly advice. The main purpose, though, is to track the movements of travelers. Such as myself, I suppose.

Seems kind of stalkerish, right? But it really is important to keep track of who's where for the simple reason that travelers make up a majority of the population. Most of these travelers stay at places called Pokémon Centers, which are public and owned by the government. Maybe you didn't realize that. The government is never mentioned in the TV show or the video games. Hey, just because the government doesn't do much doesn't mean it's nonexistent! You've seen police officers in the cartoon, right? Who did you think they worked for? So anyway, government funding for the Centers depends upon reliable data of how many travelers pass through each city on a yearly basis. Thus the importance of noting who comes in and out.

I nod to the guard, who makes a note of me on his tally sheet, and walk quickly towards the door. No time to stop and chat today. Just as I'm about to step out of the guardhouse, though, I catch a glimpse of movement. I stop. Little alarm bells are going off in my head.

"Chikari?"

I motion to Chica to stay where she is, which, right now, is just to the left of the doorway. I carefully step over her and move towards the door. The wall should be hiding me from view. I sneak a quick peek out the door, and my fears are confirmed. The motion I glimpsed? A little boy running back and forth like mad, pokéball belt jiggling up and down with each step. A sure sign of a kid itching for battle. The path ahead is littered with trainers. The path weaves all over the place, which means there are random patches of tall grass, no doubt teeming with wild Pokémon of all kinds. If I go in there, I could kick up a whole nest of Beedrills or something. And yes, I literally mean bee drills. Bees with drills for hands. Fantastic, right?

"There's no way we're going to get past them all without trouble," I whisper to Chica.

The guards are looking at me curiously now.

I pull out Chica's Pokéball. She whimpers.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I know that it looks like fun, but if I let you come with me, we'll be sure to get into another battle. I don't want you to get hurt."

She looks at me mournfully.

"I'm not going to force you, but you have to understand that we don't have much choice."

Chica looks at the Pokéball. Then to the door. Trying to make a decision. She slowly extends her leaf as if to turn the ball towards herself. But she stops. She circles around me and noses my messenger bag.

Her eyes plead with me.

End result? Everything that was in my bag is behind the counter with a guard who's been sworn to secrecy, and Chica's hitching a ride. My pokéball belt is looped over her, so that nothing Pokémon-related can be seen on me. Pokémon trainer? Who? Me?

I step out of the guardhouse at last, thankful that Chica is a bit smaller than the average Chikorita but worrying at the same time that someone will see her eyes poking out from underneath the top flap of the bag. The path here has clearly been worn into the grass by the passage of many feet. The dirt is darker than the average dirt road, and there are tiny blades of grass poking through it here and there, searching for life.

Straight ahead is the thick patch of tall grass the boy's running through. Before the path has even started, it's bending to the left to avoid that patch. The boy glances at me quickly as he runs by, but my ruse seems to have convinced him. You can't challenge someone who isn't a trainer. I'm quite anxious, but I'm trying not to appear so. Anyone could be a trainer, even that old man up ahead. If I look too suspicious, they're bound to catch on eventually, even if they don't catch sight of Chica first.

I continue walking along, wondering how the path was formed in this serpentine manner. Clearly, this used to be a large meadow. Why wouldn't people passing through just walk to the other end in a straight line? I make a turn back to the right and consider whether the trainers who used to frequent this place when it was a meadow had customary spots, as the trainers of the maze seemed to have. Perhaps the average foot traffic sought to avoid these trainers? After all, who would be going back and forth on a regular basis? The guards, for one. They certainly wouldn't want to be facing ten separate battles on their way to work every day.

Up ahead the path splits. I continue moving in the direction of the city. But who's this? Another old man, standing right in the middle of the path? Too late to turn around, it would be too obvious that I'm avoiding him.

My heart pounds as I near him. I slowly edge toward the short, thin grass along the edge of the path. I hug the inside of the curve. He's right there, in the T of the intersection. Am I too close to the edge of the path? Perhaps I should move back towards the center a bit to look more casual? No, I've already appeared to have made up my mind, moving again would look nervous. Is he looking at me? No, don't stare. But another thing about telling yourself not to do something: telling yourself not to stare is the easiest way to make yourself want to stare. My eyes dart up to his. No! Back down to the ground. Sneak back upwards.

And then I trip. Should have been paying less attention to my eyes and more to my feet.

"Ka!" Chica yelps as my bag hits the ground.

The old man comes forward and helps me to my feet, but he looks at me suspiciously.

"Did I just hear a Chikorita?"

"No?" I suggest hopefully, brushing dirt off my palms.

As he opens his mouth, I'm sure that I'm doomed now.

But instead of challenging me to a battle, he asks, "Why would you hide the fact that you're a Pokémon trainer?"

Another man runs up from down the path in time to hear this.

"A trainer!" he cries. "Dibs!"

"I don't want a battle," I say, both answering the man's question and pleading with the younger man.

"A trainer who doesn't want to battle?" the younger man asks in astonishment.

"Come on, I'm just trying to get to the city."

"Can I see your Chikorita?" the older man asks.

"No harm now, I suppose," I sigh.

I grab hold of Chica under the belly and lift her out of the bag. I don't dare set her on the ground, though.

"Chika!" she says happily, blinking in the sunlight.

"A cute little one," the old man says.

"Come on, on with it!" the younger man says. "The sooner she beats you, the sooner I get my chance."

As much as she loves being in the sunlight again, Chica's starting to look more worried than happy now.

"Please," I say. "She's in no condition to battle."

"She looks healthy enough to me," the old man says.

"You have no idea, there was this... this gigantic Snorlax chasing us all the way here!"

"A Snorlax? What was it going to do, fall on top of you in a sudden narcoleptic attack?"

He presented a good point. Snorlax are huge, but they're only known for, well, sleeping.

"And a Gengar!" I add hastily. Yes, Gengar will work. It's a super scary ghost Pokémon. "The Gengar had, like, hypnotized the Snorlax, and it was using it as a pawn so it could steal our SOULS!"

"I didn't know Gengars could perform hypnosis. I thought that was Hypno. You know, because its name is short for hypnosis?"

I'm grasping at straws now. Maybe I could beat one of them, but certainly not both. And I'd hate to see what kind of Pokémon an old man who's probably been training all his life has at his disposal.

"Why can't you just fight each other?" I ask desperately.

"Fight each other?" The men look at each other. "Actually... we never thought of that."


	7. Entering Vermillion

Back to civilization at last! I'm taking my first steps into Vermillion City. I can't wait to see what it looks like. Will it have buildings that aren't generic rectangular blocks? A population of more than 35? Walls and fences and light posts that don't look like a collection of so many pixels?

I left all the trainers back at Crazy Meadow plotting out a Pokémon tournament of epic proportions. Finally, they're all going to battle each other instead of lying in wait thirsting after the next traveler who happens by. They were so enthralled with the suggestion that I thought they were going to end up naming a holiday after me or something.

So thanks to their distraction, I was able to retrieve all my stuff, and Chica's trotting happily beside me once more.

For a while now, I've been walking down a long grassy lane that I can only assume leads into the city. I'm following a channel of water on the left that I figure must flow into the sea eventually. I've walked across the whole peninsula today; Vermillion City is on the west coast.

Now the trees on my right are thinning out, opening up. There's the Poké Mart up ahead and a small house across from it.

Chica suddenly sticks one of her tiny front feet into the top of my sock and yanks. She looks suggestively towards the boat dock that stretches southwards, out to the sea.

"We don't have time for a boat ride right now," I tell her. "We're heading for the nearest Pokémon Center to check in for some R and R. Now please get your leg out of my sock. It tickles!"

A Chikorita's "skin" has the same look and texture as the stem of a flower. It's green and soft and slightly fuzzy, but not fuzzy like a furry animal, a different kind of fuzzy. Go feel the stem on a flower (but not a rose!) and imagine if that thin little layer of green was stretched out in one solid piece over the skin of a medium sized dog.

Chica extracts her leg, but she still looks at me questioningly.

"Yes, we can go for a boat ride later," I allow. "Or at least look at the boats. I'm not sure if I can really afford a ride."

We're passing the Poké Mart now. It would be a good place to stop if I wasn't so anxious to find this city's Pokémon Center. Not only to reserve a room for the night, but because I don't want to take any chances on letting the batteries run out in my Pokéballs. Not that the results would be disastrous; if the batteries get low enough, the balls just refuse to open, thus conserving the energy needed to keep the Pokémon safe within the balls for several more weeks at the least. Even at that point, the Pokémon could still let themselves out of their balls if they really needed to, but in that case the balls' reserve power would be totally drained and they would have to stay out until the balls were repaired. I've heard a few stories of idiot trainers who let their pokéballs go uncharged for way too long, but it's never happened to anyone I know personally. So maybe the chances are long, but better safe than sorry.

So, anyway, I pass the Poké Mart and head deeper into the city. There are some very nice beaches on here on the western end, although I am rather disappointed in the buildings. Sure, they're a bit better than the ones in Fuchsia, but not by much. First of all, I've only seen five of them so far, and two of them were completely identical, down to the flower boxes outside the windows. Well, I guess it is just the next town over. Can't expect too much change all at once. Still, one thing's for sure, I'm not about to take up residence here. We'll stay for a day or two and move on to the next place.

Ah! There's the Pokémon Center at last! Basically a big, bulky cube of a building with an automatic glass door and a red roof. Not exactly the epitome of architectural design, but highly functional. The door slides open for me, and I walk in. The floor is covered in neutral-colored square tiles, decorated only with a pokéball shape shaded over the tiles in the middle. Advertising. Sure the centers are government funded, but who doesn't like picking up some extra funding where it's available?

Pokéball is the biggest brand name product there is. It has its competitors-- the makers of specialty balls like the Safari Ball or the Lure Ball-- but everyone still calls them pokéballs. You can think of it as kind of being like Kleenex. Really, they’re tissues, but everyone calls them Kleenex, right? Even if the tissue you’re referring to isn’t that brand. Thus, Serendipity's Safari Ball is a pokéball, even though it's not a Pokéball. Note the capitalization to refer to the specific brand.

As I walk into the center, I see a small glass-topped table with some cushioned stools around it to my right. Directly ahead is the main counter. All in all, it's just like the Pokémon Center in Fuchsia. I'm not surprised. I honestly think these things are mass-produced.

The counter is the main point of interest. It's set off with vases of fresh flowers and flanked by a bookshelf on one end and a PC on the other. With no one else in line, I walk right up to the cherry-colored surface.

"Welcome to Vermilion City," Nurse Joy says with a voice sweeter than candy.

I smile back, trying not to stare at the absurd pinkness of her hair. I swear that's got to be her natural color. We've got another nurse named Joy back in Fuchsia, and in all the time I've known her, I've never seen her hair fade or reveal a more normal color at the roots. I know that this nurse is also named Joy because they're all named Joy. It's a well-known fact that every Pokémon Center in existence is staffed by one. And they all look the same: white coats, pink hair, smiling faces. I think the official story is that they're all related. Sisters or cousins or something like that. It's just plain weird, if you ask me. I actually half suspect them of being government clones.

Trying not to think about it, I take my pokéballs out of my belt one by one and set them on the white mat on top of the counter.

"Chika!" Chica leaps up into the air to grab my attention. She reaches an impressive height. "Hello? I'm not in my Pokéball!" I imagine her saying.

"Yes, yes, you're going to get healed, too," I assure her. I turn the ball towards her and pop the expand button with my thumb. The button glows red, the ball pops open, and Chica zips back in, looking like a burst of colored light. I put her ball on the counter with the others.

Nurse Joy sets the pokéballs onto the little machine next to her one by one. Then the top of the machine closes, lights flash inside, and bada bing, bada boom, all Pokémon magically healed. And the pokéballs themselves are recharged. This supposedly works by adding a special electric charge to the Pokémon's energy force. There's a more complicated scientific explanation, but I never claimed to be a scientist.

As soon as Nurse Joy hands the pokéballs back to me, I toss out Chica's and Serendipity's. Chica flips her leaf in a circle and neatly smacks the Pokéball back into my waiting hand. Serendipity doesn't even try. Again.

Crash. The pokéball makes a thud as it connects with the tiled floor.

I groan. "Serendipity, we are really going to have to work on that."

I retrieve the ball and look up at the map on the wall. It's just like mine, minus the special road names, of course. Next to it, as I mentioned before, is the prototypical PC. This is the machine trainers can use to manage Pokémon they put in storage. The PC is connected to a big central machine that stores the energy waves of each the same way a pokéball does, only this machine can store a theoretically unlimited amount. Pokémon in storage there can be called back to their trainer's pokéball with the touch of a button on the PC machines. There's also item storage and a sort of email system, as well as doubling as an ATM. I'll be able to collect the money from my final paycheck tomorrow, but for now I'm just thankful that public services in this world come free of charge. Simply by virtue of being a good tax-paying citizen, I'll be able to get a room and stay for as long as I need to.

"Chan-sey?" Serendipity asks innocently, apparently not understanding what it is we have to work on.

"Right here, right now," I tell her. "I don't care if you catch it or bounce it off your head, somehow that Safari ball is going to come back to me from now on. What if we were in the middle of a battle and I needed to recall you?"

Serendipity looks troubled.

"Let's practice," I say. "Here it comes."

I toss the ball, careful not to let the button face her as it leaves my fingers. If it does, she'll just zoom back in. It doesn't matter if the button turns to face her in midair; the return function is touch sensitive. I have to actually be holding it for it to work. And it won't work for another trainer, either, because pokéballs also read fingerprints. I know, high tech, right?

The ball arcs toward her, and... crashes to the ground as Serendipity takes a step backwards.

I sigh, just happy that there's no one in the room to stare besides Nurse Joy. There are a lot of trainers out there who would find this situation completely hilarious.

"New Chansey?" Nurse Joy asks politely.

"Yeah."

"I feel your pain," she nods. "Chanseys can be awfully hard to train. Perhaps I can help."

She pulls out a Pokéball of her own and tosses it over the counter to reveal her own Chansey. Chansey: a Nurse Joy's one and only. Rumor has it that Nurse Joys have some sort of special Chansey breeding program, where they're paired with Happiny (the baby form of Chansey) eggs at birth.

As soon as the nurse's Chansey is out, she turns her head upwards, positions carefully, and finally nods her head with in a sort of popping motion. The ball connects perfectly with her "hair" and arcs back to Nurse Joy, like a soccer player head-butting a ball.

"Yes, just like that, Serendipity," I say.

Serendipity seems to have finally understood, but she looks worried.

"Of course, Chansey and I had lots of time to practice," Nurse Joy says. "There's not much else to do for entertainment on the slow days."

"How did you get the ball to release her off-center like that?" I ask. Pokéballs are programmed to release the Pokémon within directly underneath them. Logically, the Pokéball should have landed in the center of her head, not on her "hair."

"A simple matter of reprogramming. As a Nurse Joy, I am an expert of pokéball maintenance."

"Could you do that to this Safari ball?" I ask.

"Of course. Especially for a Chansey." She winks at Serendipity.

* * *

You've been incredible to follow me so far, but I know you're not interested in hearing every little mundane detail of my life. I'm not narcissistic enough to believe that. So I'll spare you the details of what happened next. Suffice it to say that Nurse Joy made short work of reprogramming the pokéball, and Serendipity... Took an extremely long time to get nowhere fast.

Finally, I gave up for the day. Maybe Chanseys just aren't meant for battle after all.

So now I'm lounging around the lobby in the hotel part of the Pokémon Center. The part that's up the escalator from the healing part. Also known as the second floor.

They've got lots of comfy chairs and such up here. Probably custom-made because I've never seen furniture like this in a Poké Mart. Like I said, in most houses you see only the boring old standbys. The Pokémon world could really make do with a good interior decorator.

I'm sitting on this fluffy lime green cushion. The kind with four little cloth-covered buttons on top.

There are trainers all around, most of them bright-eyed kids swapping stories.

"Have you gone in that Diglett tunnel yet?" I hear one say.

"No, I haven't, but I hear it's amazing!"

"Diglett is that little brown one right?" A girl's voice. "The one that pops out of the ground and goes 'Digli-dee!'? They're so cute! Catch me one, Matt! PLEASE?"

Chica's roaming around like the inspector general. This chair? Yes, it'll do, but I'm keeping an eye on those curtains.

A boy dashes in through the doorway leading to the guestrooms and almost runs her over in his eagerness.

"Chika!" she protests.

He looks down. "Ooh! Chikorita! I'm so amped to finally meet you!"

His face is lit up like a kid whose parents just announced a trip to Disney World. Chica tilts her head quizzically.

"You were always my favorite! Here, I made you something!" He flops down on the floor and begins pulling things out of a small drawstring bag with great haste.

By this time, I'm standing over him, but he doesn't seem to notice me. I examine his stuff. None of it looks very practical. A few pokéballs, sure, but no belt to put them in. A few scattered Pokédolls, a digital camera, half a sandwich wrapped in paper, and what looks suspiciously like... a cell phone? 

I can't resist grabbing it. It's been so long since I've seen one of these things. And it's so small and smooth and sleek. I trail my fingers across its surface lovingly. He doesn't notice.

"Aha!" He proudly holds up a tiny yellow and black striped baseball cap emblazoned with a lightning bolt. "See, now you can wear it whenever you're watching a game. I bet it'll look awesome on you!"

He makes a move as if to put it on her head. Chica backs away with a look in her eyes like, "Oookay, crazy person."

"Oh," he says, as if just realizing something, "I forgot about the leaf on your head. I mean, I made a little hole right here for the stem to poke through, but... How flexible is your leaf anyway? Could you squeeze it through a hole that small?"

"Excuse me," I say. "I believe you have the wrong Chikorita."

Finally, he notices me. "Waagh! Where did you come from? And what are you doing with that?" he motions towards the cell phone. "It's not a toy!"

"Oh, really? I thought it was a Pokédoll," I say sarcastically, but I put it gently back on the ground with the rest of his stuff.

"Wait a minute," he says after my comment finally sinks in. "Are you..."

I can see where he's going, so I cut him off.

"This Chikorita's trainer? Yes." Chica walks up to snuggle against my leg.

"Oh," he says, clearly disappointed. Maybe he was expecting me to have a blue ponytail and a megaphone. He stuffs everything back into his bag, slings it over his back, and walks back towards the rooms without even bothering to slip his arms into the straps.

"Stay here," I instruct Chica. Then I follow him.

He walks down the hallway, unlocks the door to number 12, and walks in. I stick my foot in the door as he swings it closed.

"Mind if I come in?" I ask. I walk in without waiting for a response. "Look kid, I don't know who you are, but you need to be more careful. You can't run around acting like some crazed fan boy. As far as these people know, this world is reality, the only reality. If you go on talking about things that happened in the tv show or what the video games were like or whatever, people will think that you're nuts and they'll ship you off to the asylum."

"The Pokémon world has asylums?" The boy asks with wide eyes, as though that's the most important part of what I've just said.

"The Pokémon world has everything."

"So you are from the real world, aren't you? I knew it!" The boy pumps his fist in the air. "I knew I couldn't be the only one! Do you know how we got here? Is there a way to get back? Not that I want to go back when it's so totally awesome being here, but..."

I continue to look at him in complete silence, trying to make it clear that I have nothing to say.

"Oh, come on, don't deny it!" he protests. "I saw you with my cell phone. You were holding it like you knew exactly how to use it, and they don't have cell phones in the Pokémon world, do they?"

He's right, but I won't say so.

"You are from the real world, aren't you?" he pleads.

"If I say yes will you wise up and leave me alone?" I ask.

"You want me to leave you alone?"

"This is a friendly warning, kid, not an open invitation to ask me every question you've got just because I've been here longer than you. Just take my advice and watch what you're doing when there are other people around. Unless you actually think that the loony bin would be an exceedingly pleasant place to spend the rest of your life."

I walk back out the door and shake my head. That kid wouldn't last two minutes against a caterpillar in Viridian Forest.


	8. That Annoying Kid

Chica and I have been walking around the city all morning. There really isn't much to see besides the boats out in the harbor, which we saw first thanks to Chica's insistence. I was correct about not being able to afford a ride, incidentally. Chica was disappointed, but I promised we could come back some other time after I've had a chance to make more money. Somehow.

So anyway, now that we've finished stocking up on supplies at the Poké Mart we're taking a break from the city. As soon as we get out of the city limits, I see it: a pond, small, but clean. At first glance, it doesn't appear to be more than a glorified puddle, but it's really more like a long pool, possibly fed by an underground spring. I dip my fingers in to test the temperature. Cool but not cold. A perfect temperature for drinking, and also good for one-horned goldfish, which is more to the point.

I pull out Unicorn's Pokéball, but pause halfway to throwing it. I transfer it to my left hand and toss out Serendipity's pokéball instead. As expected, she fails once more in the attempt to return the ball to my hand. Although this time she actually turns to watch it coming before backing away in fear. Progress.

Then I toss out Unicorn's, landing him expertly in the middle of the water. He immediately dives down, and when the pokéball reaches the surface, he blows up a column of water that pushes it up and back until it's sailing through the air. I have to take a step forward to catch it, but it's still effective. It will be perfect with a bit more practice.

"See?" I tell Serendipity. "Unicorn can do it, too. You just need a little bit of confidence. We can keep trying different moves until something works."

Serendipity looks doubtful. She stares off into the distance as though she's thinking, but still she wears a frown. I sigh and decide not to push the point right now. We have plenty of time. As long as Unicorn is getting some exercise and Chica's stretching out in the sun, we're getting something out of this visit. I take off my messenger bag and shoes and lower myself to the grass. I stretch out my legs so that my toes are dangling in the pure water.

Unicorn swims gracefully up to the surface with just a few movements of those speckled white fins. The water is so clear that I can see his every move. His rubbery orange head bumps against my feet the way Chica nudges me whenever she wants to get my attention or just say hello.

I smile. Water Pokémon must have it tough. It's so hard to find spots to let them out for exercise, not to mention water-friendly battle areas. I suppose if I had a salt-water Pokémon he could swim beside me when I'm walking along a beach, but there's no way a big fish like Unicorn could follow me around all day long the way Chica does. I have to be in the water for him to even touch me.

Of course, the fact that he's nibbling on my toes right now does away with a significant portion of my guilt.

"Ugh, that feels so weird!" I laugh as his lips massage half the toes on my right foot. I could swear he has a mischievous glint in his eye right now.

"Alright," I say, "as long as you're careful with the fangs." Did I mention before that Seakings have fangs? Two of them to be precise. Picture those big, fake vampire ones you see in old movies, but without all the normal teeth in between. My big toe is nuzzling the side of one of those bones right now, but as long as I'm between the gap I shouldn't come into contact with the pointy ends. It feels a little soft and slimy, that's all.

Wait a minute, I hear a rustle in the trees behind me. I turn in time to see the boy from earlier duck behind the nearest trunk.

"Hello?" I call as he continues to cower behind it. "I can kind of see you, you know!"

He emerges, blushing, and almost steps on Chica.

"Ka!" she yelps as his foot pushes down on her side. He stumbles back in surprise. He's swinging his arms, caught off balance. And now he's falling.

"Oof!" He lands flat on his back.

Chica leaps onto his chest and growls. Her leaf is twitching with anger.

He lifts his head to look at her, but he doesn't dare get up. Smart of him.

I look down at him accusingly. "Have you been spying on me?"

"Well..."

"Come on, don't deny it. You only used the most obvious way of hiding there is!"

"Ok, ok." He looks warily at Chica, who's still glaring inches from his face. "I was following you, but only because you seem so cool! I mean, it's like you know everything. Like you said, you've been here longer. You've got it all figured out, and you've got awesome Pokémon, and..."

"Don't you have any Pokémon?"

"No," he admits. "I've been trying to catch some, but it's just not working."

"Look, kid," I say, despite the pathetic little face he's making, "that's not my problem. I went out of my way to give you some advice, now take it and leave me alone."

I motion to Chica, and she jumps off the kid's chest reluctantly. As we're walking away, she shoots him one last look over her shoulder. I wouldn't be surprised if she named him her enemy for life after this.

* * *

We're back in the city, hanging out in the big construction site in the Northeast corner. There's nothing here but gravel and abandoned scraps; according to Nurse Joy, the guy who planned to build here ran out of money before he could even get started.

I've declared another training session for Serendipity. We've been at it for almost half an hour now, and there's still no progress. The Safari ball did bounce off the hair-like appendages once, right on the ends where the color transitions into a darker pink, but it just sailed off towards the fence. Not at all in my direction. Judging from the surprise on Serendipity's face, it was also a complete accident.

Just to the south, across a long hedge, I can see the boy from earlier fishing away. For once he isn't watching us, just the water and the rusty little fishing pole he got from the third fisherman brother. That's right, there's another one, and he lives here in Vermillion. Apparently this kid seemed like another of those "promising young people" the fisherman bros are so fond of. Can't imagine why.

His bobber disappears under the surface, and he clumsily tries to reel it in. The pole wobbles back and forth wildly.

I laugh; he's totally going to lose that fish. But, to my amazement, something surfaces. A Magikarp. It could only be a Magikarp. I shake my head. I swear if it wasn't for those rock-hard red scales, they would have gone the way of the passenger pigeon long, long ago.

I turn back to Serendipity, who's been staring down the Safari ball like it could jump up and attack her at any moment. But as focused as I am on her, I can't miss the enormous splash that coming from behind me. Somehow, the idiot's managed to lose the 'karp AND fall into the ocean. The shocked look on his face is completely priceless.

I must be laughing really loudly because he turns to look at me as he sputters and tries to paddle his way back to shore. He's soaking wet as he climbs out, from his red hair to his sneakers. He picks up his backpack and trudges off in the direction of the Pokémon Center. He doesn't look too happy, but what should I care?

I turn back to my Pokémon and decide that this would be as good a time as any to stop for lunch. I unload all the picnic supplies I packed into my messenger bag this morning and call Chica over from the grass where she's been playing. Sandwiches today. It's great to be back in civilization.

We've just finished when the boy reemerges from the Center. He's walking right towards us.

"You know," he says, stopping a couple feet away, "there's an easier way to do what you're doing." His eyes are narrowed, and he's dropped his ever-present smile.

"This from the kid who failed to catch a Magikarp?"

"Ok, so it was an epic fail," the kid admits. "There's no reason to laugh your head off."

"Oh, but there was," I say. "It was hilarious."

He stands there quietly steaming. Beside me, Chica's staring at him menacingly, apparently still holding a grudge for the way he stepped on her. I'm completely expecting him to storm off in anger when, instead, he opens his mouth and says, "Did you ever think about using Double Slap?"

"Double Slap?" I ask before I can stop myself.

"Yo, Chansey," he calls.

Serendipity's head pops up.

"Doubleslap," he orders. Then he picks up a rock and throws it at her.

"Hey!" I make a grab for his hand, but the rock's already sailing towards her left arm.

Serendipity hesitates, but she's apparently decided to obey the order. She's pulling her arm back in preparation for the slap. It connects solidly with the rock, sending it neatly back to the kid's waiting hand. He catches it, tosses it into the air, and catches it again.

He raises his eyebrows at me and walks away. Chica barrels after him, but I stop her. I hate to admit it, but he may actually have something there.


	9. Travelling Underground

I've been standing outside room number 12 for almost five minutes now, just staring at the door. I'm forcing myself to do this, but I really don't want to. Thus the stalling.

"Come on," I tell myself silently. "Just knock and get it over with."

I sigh and do so.

The door slowly opens.

"Hi," the kid from before says cautiously. Clearly, he's not quite sure how things stand between us after he hijacked my training session with Serendipity.

"Hi," I respond reluctantly. "I just came by to... apologize." The word tastes bad in my mouth, but I continue. "That Double Slap idea really worked. I had no idea you could actually be, you know, serious."

As I say this, a smile spreads across the kid's face.

"Serious? Yeah, right," he says happily. "I really had you going. You should have seen me rocking out in the Pokémon Center lobby as soon as I was out of sight to celebrate my moment of brilliance."

Ok, that sounds more like him.

"So... no hard feelings?" I ask.

"Nah," he smiles.

"Ok then, see you," I say, feeling relieved. Apology made, fence mended. Now I can get back to my life in peace. I head back to my room, thinking about the announcement I have to tell Chica and Serendipity.

"Wait, that's it?" the kid asks.

I turn back, having only taken about two steps down the hall. "Uh, yeah. What did you expect, a fresh-baked apology pie?"

He stays silent, apparently trying to figure that one out. I just roll my eyes and walk away.

"Ok, guys," I say, stepping back into my own room, "I think we've been in Vermillion City long enough. We've seen just about all there is to see, and we've made some good progress on our battle preparation. Let's make tracks for Cerulean City! There's this underground path that will take us straight there. It won't be very scenic, but it will be a straight shot and we'll be able to avoid all kinds of trainers. Short and battle-free, that's what I like."

The main attraction of Cerulean City is that the trainers there will be much easier to go up against. Instead of running away in fear at the first sign of a battle, we might actually be able to take them on. That's definitely a good thing, and not only because it means that I'll be able to make some money. From now on, it'll be much easier and safer to get to where I want to go. Things are finally looking up.

Serendipity and Chica call out their assent to the plan. Serendipity's looking a lot happier since she got the pokéball trick right. I take another good look at her: the three little "hairs" on each side of her head are starting to curl inward, another good sign of the transformation from Chansey to Blissey.

I'm really glad to see that, not because it means that I get a Blissey, although that will be cool. More importantly, it's solid proof that Serendipity really likes me and is happy.

I might have mentioned that Chanseys evolve based on happiness. Basically, that means that when a Chansey gets really attached to its trainer, it literally transforms into a creature that's bigger and stronger and just blissful, which I suppose is where the name Blissey comes from. Kinda weird, but it fits so perfectly with the fact that the species is so sweet and caring, apparently to the point where it's so central to them that it actually affects their physical being. I think it's a really wonderful creature.

I was a little worried when I first caught Serendipity because I wasn't sure that she would fit in with the team. After all, she'd shown such a marked dislike for trainers of all kinds; she was an expert at running away. I would feel really guilty if it turned out that after all this time she still just wanted to go back to her old life in the Safari Zone. The signs of her evolution give me hope that I'm actually doing something right, and it feels great.

This trip is going better than I ever could have planned it. I can't imagine anything that could throw me off course now.

"There it is, Chica, the entrance to the underground path." I point to a tiny little brick building that's nothing but walls and a plain metal door. It looks like some kind of bomb shelter, but the sign outside clearly says "Underground Path: Cerulean City - Vermillion City", so we must be in the right place.

The door opens with a groan. Inside, I see a dirt floor with a hole in the middle. At one edge of the hole, the top of a simple wooden ladder is visible--clearly the only way down.

Well, it's not exactly the fanciest, but I'm sure it's efficient. Judging from the way the sweetness of her smell is fading, Chica is feeling a little creeped out, but I'm liking the signs that no one else has been here for a while. We should have the tunnel all to ourselves.

I pick up Chica and hold her under one arm as I climb down the ladder. The rungs are dry and sturdy, a good sign that the government probably keeps this place in good working order. So they've got a cheap budget, so what? Works for me.

Below, the tunnel is all tiled-floor, walls, and ceiling. There are overhead lights every few yards, so the visibility is good enough. There are a few dim areas at the edge of each circle of light, but nothing scary. It's also perfectly clean.

The tunnel is quiet except for my footsteps and Chica's as we walk along. There's room enough for lots of people to come through here if they need to, but it seems like we're the only ones. I wonder why the government built these in the first place. It's clear that they didn't put a lot of funding towards it. In fact, they probably were able to get ground Pokémon like Diglett to carve it out for them, which means that all they had to do was spread the tile and hook up the lights.

As its name indicates, Digletts are masters of digging. The evolved form is called Dugtrio, which I like to think has the word "dug" in it because they're so fast that they were done with the job before you finished saying their name.

I'm getting off track, but it's easy to let my mind wander like this when it's so quiet. Even Chica's walking along silently, in a perfectly straight line. Maybe it's because there's nothing to see here, nothing for her to do. Or maybe she's still creeped out, expecting any minute to hear...

Something like those footsteps behind us.

"Did you hear that?" I ask Chica, turning around to see what made the noise.

Here's the other thing about this tunnel: it's perfectly straight. No twists, no turns, just straight onwards like the whole thing was drawn out with a ruler. So even though we've been walking for a while now, I can still see right back to the beginning of the tunnel, which means I spot the source of the noise instantly.

"You again?" I groan. The kid I met in Vermillion is standing a few steps from the ladder. There's no mistaking that bright red hair or that t-shirt he's wearing. It's got some kind of words on it. Honestly.

My words echo off the walls, so I'm sure that he can hear me despite the distance between us.

"I wasn't trying to spy on you this time," he says like a little kid looking for a reward sticker. "And you could call me by my name, you know."

"If you aren't trying to spy, then what are you doing? Also, you're being an idiot because you never told me your name!"

"Oh," he says. "It's Elliot, and I thought..."

"You thought what?"

"I thought that we could travel together," he calls down the tunnel hopefully. He's getting closer to us now, but he's still far enough away that I could probably lose him if I tried. It's certainly tempting.

Travel together? I groan again. "Seriously, kid? Out of all the cliché moves, you have to pick the worst. First, you try spying on me FROM BEHIND A TREE, and now you want to come with me on my journey?"

"What? So it's cliché just because it happened on the tv show?"

"No, it's cliché because it happened on the tv show over and over and over again," I stress. "Did you get your entire life philosophy from that show or what?"

"Oh, come on," he says. He's still getting closer, really starting to close the gap now because I've stopped to yell at him. Chica's watching him, crouched down on her front legs like she's ready to pounce if he gets too close.

"Come on, what?" I ask. "You can't even listen to one simple piece of advice. They don't have Pokémon novelty shirts in the Pokémon world because they don't need to sell merchandise for themselves!"

The "Gotta Catch 'Em All" lettering on his shirt has finally gotten close enough to become readable. Elliot looks down at it. "Oh," he says simply.

"Alright then," I say, taking advantage of my victory. "If you'll excuse us..." I turn my back on him.

"Wait," he says, as if he's just realized something. "For someone who thinks that she's so cool, you know an awful lot about that tv show."

"Yeah, I watched it, so what?" I demand, turning back in spite of myself.

"You act like you don't care, but deep down I think you're loving all of this. I bet in the real world you were as big of a fan as I am. Maybe even bigger."

I grind my teeth as I try to come up with a response. Meanwhile, he's finally caught up to us. He stops a couple steps away.

"Look," he says, "I don't want any hard feelings here. I even got you something, see?"

He swings his drawstring bag off his back and pulls it open. Failing to come up with a reply, I've started walking away again, so he's struggling to follow as he reaches inside and pulls out... an Eevee.

"Vee!" it mews.

"You had an Eevee in your backpack?!"

In an instant, I close the gap between us and snatch it out of his hands. It seems to be alright, so I pet its head reassuringly.

"What's wrong with that?" he asks.

"It could have suffocated!"

"Oops." It's a credit to him that he actually looks a little green at the suggestion.

I set down the little brown creature, and it wiggles its ears at Chica playfully. Chica wriggles her leaf in response and smiles.

I said before that you could think of a Chikorita as being sort of like a dog, right? Well, you could easily think of Eevee as being like a cat. It's kind of like a cat and a fox combined, actually. It has little cat-like paws, a flowing fox-like tail, and long ears. Actually, those are kind of like a rabbit's but farther apart. It's brown all over, except for the tip of its tail and a big fluffy white collar of fur around its neck that looks sort of like a stylized mane. Its eyes are deep brown and huge, which is basically the cherry on top of the cuteness cake. I have to work hard to resist the urge to snatch it back up and cuddle it for an hour straight.

"It's a boy," Eliot says quietly, looking down at the Pokémon pair.

"Where did you get him?" I ask. I'm sure he didn't catch an Eevee for himself. Especially since Eevees are largely domesticated. You just don't see them out in the wild.

"A woman in the Pokémon Fan Club gave him to me yesterday. Actually, she gave me two. Mine's a girl."

"And she just gave them to you? YOU?"

He ignores my tone. "She said her Eevee laid the eggs not too long ago. She was just looking for someone who'd take good care of them."

Yeah, all Pokémon lay eggs. Don't ask me why. That's just how it works.

I look down at the little fox-cat again. He and Chica are running around in a small circle, apparently cementing their new friendship. Next to Chica, the Eevee looks even smaller than usual, like a kitten playing with a medium sized dog. Still, they seem to be getting on just fine. Chica seems especially happy. She looks up at Eliot, and I notice that all traces of hostility are gone. That seals it.

"Well," I say. "I can't just let you take that Eevee of yours and run away with her, can I? There's no way you could take care of her on your own. And there's certainly no way you can take care of two. That would be just plain irresponsible."

Eliot pumps a fist in the air. "Yes!" He looks like he's setting up to do a dance or something.

"Uh, hello? I'm gonna need that Eevee's pokéball," I remind him.

"Oh." He pauses. "The lady gave them to me without any pokéballs. I assumed they'd never been put in one before. That's why I put yours in my bag. I thought it would make it easier. You know, so they don't have to rewire the original pokéball to match your fingerprints."

Since a pokéball only opens when the fingerprint scanners on the surface confirm that the owner is holding it, whenever someone gives, sells, or trades a Pokémon, the ball has to be reset for the new owner's fingerprints. In this case, though, the Eevee doesn't have a current pokéball, so I can catch it just like a wild Pokémon. But without having to fight it first

So, actually, he was right about that part, but I was not about to admit it. It was still half-brained thinking. I've barely known this kid two days and already I know that he's bound to mess up all my plans. Travelling with him is definitely going to be a chore. Still, I guess someone's got to keep him from getting himself killed out here.


	10. Still Underground -- Seriously, There's Not Much to See Down Here

"So what should I call you?" Elliot asks.

"What?" I ask, somewhat caught off guard by the question.

We're still walking along the underground path. Chica and my new Eevee are plodding along on my right, while Elliot's to my left. I would prefer he walk behind us, but every time I speed up he insists on matching my pace.

His voice echoes off the tiled walls as he repeats his question. "I told you my name. So what should I call you?"

"You can do me a favor and not call me anything at all," I say.

"Oh, come on," he protests. "You don't have to be so rude."

"Maybe I do," I counter.

"Come on, just your name. How much harm can that do?"

"Not much," I admit.

"So you'll tell me?"

"No."

For a second he looks absolutely exasperated. I smile.

"Ok," he says, catching my expression, "so what if I get lost in the middle some forest and you're nowhere to be seen? How will I be able to find you if I can't call out your name?"

"Easy," I say, smiling again. "Just follow the sound of the hysterical laughter."

Elliot shakes his head. "You are impossible, you know that?"

"Yep." Amazingly, I find that I'm beginning to enjoy myself. It's so easy to mess with him.

"Alright, fine," he says, finally giving up. "If you won't tell me your name, will you at least tell me how long you've been here? Have you met anyone else from the real world? Do you have any idea how we got here?"

I look at him seriously now. "You really shouldn't be talking about that stuff," I caution.

"Oh, lighten up. There's no one else down here," he says, waving his arms across the wide open space all around us. "And if there was, we'd be able to hear them coming from miles off. You heard me coming right away."

I figure this kid's not going to shut up until I give him something. Better here than someplace we could be overheard.

"It's hard to say how long I've been here because I wasn't really keeping track at first, but I'd say about a year," I tell him.

"A whole year?" he gasps. "I only came last week!"

"Well, lucky you," I tell him. "It took me months just to get situated. You have no idea how hard it is to get started when people don't just walk up and hand you an Eevee to start out with. I was only just able to get out of Fuchsia about a week ago."

"Well," he says, "even with this Eevee, I probably never would have been able to leave the city if it wasn't for you. I'm really glad you showed up."

I just grunt. "You wanted to know how we got here?" I ask, changing the subject. "Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that I woke up one morning in a strange bed in the Fuchsia City Pokémon Center with no idea how I ended up there or how to get back. I didn't even have any of my stuff with me. I've got no clue how you managed to bring along that cell phone of yours, not to mention that t-shirt."

"This is what I was wearing when I woke up," he explains, pulling at the "Gotta Catch 'Em All" logo. "I was in the real world when I put it on. How was I supposed to know I'd end up here?"

"Yeah? When I woke up, I was wearing this," I say, indicating downwards to my ensemble. "Sleeveless blue shirt, red skirt, a hat with half a Pokéball logo on it? I look like a character from the video game. And all this other stuff? I definitely didn't buy it."

"That's weird," he says, looking at the items I indicated, including my Pokéball belt and my messenger bag.

"Tell me about it," I say. "It's like whatever brought me here wanted me to fit in, to look like an ordinary trainer."

Elliot frowns, seeming more confused than ever.

"Hey, what can I tell you? I never claimed to have all the answers. It doesn't matter anyway. That old life's gone. I don't know if you want to try to get back, but everything I care about is here now. Never had much of a life back there anyway."

"No, I don't want to go back either!" he says excitedly. "At least not yet. There's so much to do here! So much to see! This place is amazing!"

"Good," I say. "So we're agreed. Now the first thing you'll want to do is remember what I told you the first time I met you, for goodness sake! And preferably before we reach that exit up ahead. Here."

I toss him a sweatshirt from my bag. "Put it on to cover up that ridiculous shirt. And once we get up to the surface, don't mention this stuff again. If you start mouthing off like an idiot, I WILL pretend that I don't know you."

"Thanks," he says gratefully, catching the sweatshirt. He pauses to slip it on.

"Vee!" his Eevee says as he sets his bag on the ground. He's let her out of her pokéball and left his bag open at the top so she can have a comfy ride and still stick her head out to see what's going on.

For her part, Chica's still walking along, but I think she's starting to look a little less green than normal. Lack of sunlight can do that to a Chikorita. It's about time we got out of this place.

"Oh, there's the end! I see it!" Elliot exclaims.

He takes off running, and I roll my eyes. Until Chica starts to follow him. Shoot. Now I have to speed up.

When I reach the end of the tunnel, Chica's bouncing up and down at the foot of the ladder. All I see of Elliot is one bright red sneaker disappearing through the hole in the ceiling.

"Alright, just hold still," I say as Chica calls out to me, still hopping like she thinks she can jump the full length of the ladder if she just keeps trying. I pause to return my Eevee to his Pokeball, knowing that I can't carry two Pokemon up the ladder at once. Luckily, once that's done, Chica calms down long enough for me to pick her up. I hold her under my right arm and hold the ladder tight with my left as I climb up. I set her down again as we emerge in a room more or less identical to the one we entered the tunnel through.

Chica immediately zooms through the open door. I follow, muttering as I close the door behind me. Elliot might have left it open for me on purpose, of course, but, annoyed with him as I am, I'm more inclined to call it carelessness.

I look around to see where we came up. Having been underground all this time, I don't even know what's nearby. I pivot around in a slow circle. There's a guardhouse, there's a nice grassy path, and there's Elliot vaulting over a white picket fence.

"Elliot! What are you doing?"

"Look at all these Pokémon!" Elliot laughs. He crouches down to let a curious Nidoran sniff at his fingers, and Eevee jumps out of his backpack. She runs happily through the grass, then flops down and rolls around in it.

I stand outside the fence, looking at the area inside. Elliot's right. There are a lot of Pokémon here for such a small area. All different kinds, too: male and female Nidorans, Pidgeys, Caterpies... even a Charmander. The clearing is fenced in on all four sides, and there's a house right in the middle.

"Um, Elliot?" I say, "I think you should get out of there."

"Why?" Elliot asks. He's smiling broadly as he feeds bread crumbs to the bird Pokémon perched on his arm, clearly not taking me seriously.

"That's why," I say as the door to the house opens and a very angry-looking old man comes running out.

"Trying to steal the Pokémon from my daycare, are you? I'll show you young whippersnappers!" he shouts, waving a walking stick above his head. It doesn't look like he has any intention of waiting for an explanation.

"Oh," Elliot says simply. His eyes grow wide as the man rounds the corner like an angry Tauros, heading straight for him.


	11. A Lot of Screaming

"Elliot, you idiot!" I scream. The wind whips against my face as we run away from the daycare center at full speed.

"How was I supposed to know?" he yells back.

"Because I told you! I screech.

"Bring back that Eevee!" the old man yells at both of us. For a guy who looks to be at least 80, he sure can run. We've booked it halfway to Cerulean City, and he's still keeping pace. I have no idea what he'll do if he catches us, but from the way he's waving his walking stick over his head, it can't be good. And he's getting closer.

"This is not your Eevee!" Elliot screams back at him, tightly clasping the little fox-cat in his arms. The extra weight is probably just slowing him down. Anything with four legs can run faster than you, even if it is as small as an Eevee. Take a look at Chica. She's at least fifty yards ahead of us, and she keeps turning back to make sure we're still following her.

"Don't you lie to me!" the old man rejoins. "I saw you take it from my yard!"

"That's because I brought her in with me!" All this yelling combined with the running seems to be making Elliot breathless. You can hear the pauses between his words as though each one is a struggle.

"Can't you check your log?" I demand, seriously beginning to wonder if I should leave Elliot behind. After all, you don't have to outrun the bear, as they say, just the guy next to you. And it was his own stupidity that got us into this mess in the first place.

"I don't keep a LOG!" the old man screams as though the very idea is completely ridiculous.

"What kind of daycare are you running?" I scream indignantly. How in the world can you run a business without keeping track of which creatures you're supposed to be caring for from day to day? I know the government here is pretty lax about taxes and regulations, but I mean really!

Elliot's definitely starting to trail behind now. He's huffing and puffing like he's just had to run a marathon instead of the length of a single route. Personally, I'm doing just fine. I am feeling the effects of the exercise, but it's a good exercise, not much more than what I'm used to. I could easily leave Elliot in the dust, pretend that I don't know him, just like I promised I would if he screwed things up. I turn my head and watch him struggling for breath.

"Hand me that Eevee," I say, slowing down to match his pace.

"What?" he manages to gasp out.

"For once in your life just do it!" I order, holding out my hands.

He looks at me uncertainly, but he nods, still gasping, and thrusts the fox-cat into my arms.

I pull it safely to my chest and pirouette so that the old man can see that I'm the one who has it now. I snap back on to Elliot, forcing him to hold my gaze. "Now jump that hedge in three, two, one..."

He leaps over the shrubbery with legs splayed, crashing to the ground on the other side. I don't stick around to see if he gets back up. He's in Cerulean City now, there will be someone along to help him. I hook a sharp right, diverting the old man's attention away from Elliot. I'm going to be taking the long way around.

I sprint all the way to the edge of the city and turn northwards, running along the fence that makes up the adjacent edge. I run and run, and finally, FINALLY, the old man is beginning to slow down. I peek behind me in time to see him bent over in a sudden bout of fatigue, and it gives me all the time I need.

"Go, go, go!" I say, tossing Eevee over the fence before he can look up and catch me. Don't worry, cats always land on their feet. With any luck, she'll be smart enough to go find Elliot and get back inside her Pokéball. I quickly pull my arms back in so that it looks like I'm still carrying her.

I run still farther, and I can hear the old man screaming now: "Stop! Thief!" He must be running out of energy; he's finally started calling out for someone else to help him.

"Stop! Thief!"

What the old man doesn't know is that Cerulean City was always my favorite in the video game. What's not to love? The berry powder guy, the daycare, Cerulean Cave... I spent so much time walking my character through the city that I've got the layout down pat. And up ahead is the house where Team Rocket punched a hole through the back wall. I know there's no Team Rocket really, but if the second floor of the Pokémon Centers are any indication, even if the video games change something, they keep it pretty close to the original. So there should still be a hole there where I can slip through and lose him.

I'm nearing the house now. The old man is so far behind that by the time he rounds the bend he won't be able to tell where I've gone. I make the turn myself, and... Yes! There it is!

I dive through without even taking the time to turn. Luckily, I've timed it out exactly right; I don't even scrape the wall. I just fall cleanly through the opening and hit the floor with a spasm of pain on my left side. I wince as I climb to my feet, picturing the giant bruise I'm going to have on my shoulder tomorrow.

I look up just in time to meet the eyes of the police woman swooping in to arrest me. I completely forgot that the video game had an officer on guard inside the house. Hey, give me a break! It was never important in the game. And running for your life does make it a little difficult to focus.

As the policewoman pulls my arms behind me and snaps on a pair of handcuffs, my eyes lock on the strand of blue hair hanging down between her eyes.

"Please don't tell me your name is Jenny," I groan.

As if this world needed more freaky look-alikes. Like Nurse Joy, Officer Jenny comes in several varieties, all of them also completely identical. And with the same name. I had hoped that they only existed in the tv show. Guess not.


	12. Deep Trouble

Well, that definitely wasn't in the video game. I take back what I said about the video games being faithful representations of the Pokémon world. Apparently, there's an entire working police station located behind the Cerulean City gym, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that that's where Officer Jenny is hauling me off to. Just my luck that the first sign I've had that there might be some complexity and realism out here has to be in the form of a place that I would prefer not to have exist.

Officer Jenny walks me in the door and straight into what appears to be an interrogation room.

"Sit down," she orders.

I slide awkwardly into the indicated chair, and she pulls out the one on the opposite end of the table. My hands are still cuffed behind my back, so I lean forward uncomfortably.

"So, thought you could steal an Eevee from the poor old daycare man, did you?" she scolded.

"Sorry, I don't mean to make trouble here, but I don't have an Eevee," I point out, nodding my head downwards to emphasize the point that there's not exactly a Pokémon sitting in my lap.

"But the daycare man says he saw you running with it," the officer points out.

"I'm sorry, 'the daycare man'? Doesn't he have a name?" I ask.

"No," she says immediately. "At least, not that I'm aware of. And that's avoiding the question."

I decide not to point out the fact that she didn't actually ask me anything. I'm trying to get myself out of trouble, not dig myself deeper into it.

"Right," I say instead. "Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's his word against mine, and unless you can actually produce this Eevee I supposedly stole..."

I probably could just tell her what really happened instead of dancing around the issue like this, but Elliot's behavior looks suspicious from whatever way you paint it. Even if they realize he didn't steal anything, it looks like he was about to. At the very least, they could book him for trespassing. And I would be labeled his accomplice. So instead, I'm going to try to play this smart.

"We haven't found the Eevee," Officer Jenny informs me, "but we are on the lookout for it and for your friend, the one who stole it in the first place."

"Allegedly," I say. "You think this hypothetical Eevee is with him?"

"No," a second Officer Jenny says, stepping into the room. "The daycare man clearly stated that this girl was the one carrying the Eevee when the two of them separated. I just finished taking his statement."

"Alright then," I say to the newcomer, who's now standing next to my arresting officer with her arms folded sternly. "So if he was telling the truth, and I didn't have any Eevee with me when I was arrested, it must have escaped, right?"

"Right," my arresting officer says cautiously, as if she's waiting to see where I'm going with this.

"So if it escaped," I continue, "and if it really was stolen from the daycare center, it would have run right back there, wouldn't it?"

"Or back to its original trainer if he happened to be close by," the new Officer Jenny points out.

"Ok. So, if I might make a humble suggestion, here, you should send someone back to the daycare center to look for it. If you find it waiting for you outside the fence, then you've got proof that someone stole it. And if it went back to its trainer, that person will be sure to come forward. Personally, though, I'm not seeing any Eevee, and I don't really think it's possible to steal something that doesn't exist. Have you considered that the daycare man might be making this whole thing up?"

"You've got a lot of nerve," the new officer says.

But my arresting officer pulls her out into the hallway. I can't hear what they're saying behind the closed door, but when it opens again only one of them comes back. I can't tell which one. They're all identical, remember?

I shift uncomfortably. "Hey, my arm is starting to fall asleep here," I say before she has a chance to sit down. "Would you mind uncuffing me? It's not like there's anywhere for me to run."

Her eyes narrow, but she walks up behind me and orders me to stand. I feel an immediate relief as the key turns and the cuffs snap open. I pull my hands out from behind my back and roll my shoulders forward, rubbing my wrists as I do so.

"Thanks," I say, truly grateful for the favor.

Officer Jenny doesn't answer. She just walks back over to her side of the table and takes her seat. I sit back down, too.

"Now, are you going to tell me what really happened?"

I remain silent. In the real world, I imagine that this might be a good time to ask for my lawyer, but I'm guessing it doesn't work that way here. Crime is so rare that any lawyers that did exist would probably go out of business. They wouldn't be funded by the government like the police officers are. As far as I've heard, the criminals just represent themselves.

But they still can't make me talk if I don't want to. I just hope that Elliot's hiding out somewhere safe and not wandering around looking for me. The last thing I want is for him to get arrested, too. Knowing him, he'd probably manage to get us into even deeper trouble under questioning. We can't afford any more stupid mistakes.

* * *

I've been sitting here now for what feels like hours, refusing to talk. Officer Jenny keeps trying to get me to admit my guilt, but I refuse to back down. Finally, the second officer walks back into the interrogation room.

"I'm going to need you to empty your pokéball belt," she orders.

"Did you find your imaginary Eevee?" I ask.

She glares at me. I'll take that as a "no."

"I'm going to need you to cooperate," she says. "Empty that belt."

I stand up slowly and separate my pokéballs from my belt one by one, laying them on the table in front of me.

"Only four?" she asks suspiciously.

"I have empty ones in my bag if you want to check," I say innocently, offering it to them.

The second officer nods to the first, who takes the bag from my hands and walks out to perform the inspection.

"Call out your Pokémon," the second officer orders.

In a show of obedience, I toss out Serendipity's pokéball. When she returns it with the slapping motion that Elliot showed her, I'm proud and relieved at the same time. I don't want to look inexperienced or unskilled when I'm trying to seem tough and confident in front of the police officers.

"Set the ball on the table and call out your next one," she orders.

I put the Safari ball on the table, but as my hand hovers over the three remaining, I hesitate.

The officer smiles slightly, as though she's finally got me where she wants me, and I hurriedly pick up the Lure Ball.

"Do you have a fish tank, by any chance?" I ask. "I don't want my Seaking to suffocate by releasing him somewhere without water."

Her eyes narrow again. "Are all the rest of your Pokémon water Pokémon?" she asks.

"No," I admit reluctantly. Unfortunately, I can't see any way that I can get away with lying about it.

"Then we'll save that one for later," she says, motioning for me to put it down.

Serendipity is still standing off to the side, looking very confused. Luckily, she's also waiting quietly and patiently. A Pokémon with a more rambunctious personality would be a nightmare to deal with right now.

The only two pokéballs left are Chica's, which is empty, and my new Eevee's. Neither one will be fun to explain, but better Chica than Eevee.

"This one's empty, too," I offer awkwardly.

"Empty?" the officer demands. "You expect me to believe that you carry around an empty pokéball in your belt?"

"My Chikorita was loose when I got arrested." I toss the pokéball in the air just to prove that it will fall to the ground like an ordinary baseball.

"When we searched the daycare man's house, we were unable to locate the pokéball of the missing Eevee," the officer informs me. "We have reason to believe that you stole this pokeball in order to illegally reprogram it. The Eevee may be missing, but if we can prove that you are in possession of the stolen pokéball, we will have more than enough evidence to convict you. I advise you to confess to your crime and reveal the location of the missing Pokémon. If you cooperate, we may be able to lower your sentence."

"No, I can prove it," I protest. "Walk me to the front door and I'll show you. You can even put the handcuffs back on if you want to."

At the mention of handcuffs, Serendipity finally speaks up. "Se-e-e," she whimpers. Her eyes are wide and frightened. She only grows more frightened as the officer pulls out a pair and begins to walk towards me. I can tell that she doesn't understand what's happening, that she's scared that something horrible is about to happen to me. She doesn't like those handcuffs at all. And from the way she's frozen in place, she also feels absolutely helpless.

The officer is getting nearer, still holding the metal bands.

"Can I return my Pokémon first?" I beg. I hate to see Serendipity like this.

The officer steps aside silently, just long enough for me to call Serendipity back. I sigh with relief as soon as the light fades. I won't feel completely better until I can take the time to comfort her, but it's a start.

The officer snaps the cuffs into place. Thankfully, my arms are cuffed in front of me this time.

As soon as we get to the door, I put two fingers to my mouth and whistle. A second or two passes, and then Chica comes running.

"Ka-ri!" she gasps, seeing at once that I'm a prisoner. Immediately, I smell the change in her scent that indicates anger: something mildly resembling the stench of rotten fruit. The leaf on her head twitches back and forth as though she's preparing for an attack.

"Chica, don't," I warn.

She stops twitching and sits down in the doorway, but her mouth looks huffy. The smell hasn't changed one bit.

"Now do you believe me?" I ask.

"There's still one pokéball you haven't opened," the officer reminds me.

"Wait. Here," I order Chica sternly. I walk back to the interrogation room with a sense of dread finally blooming in my stomach. I don't know how I'll be able to talk my way out of this one. No more stalling. No more options.

With a hand that suddenly feels very heavy, I pick up the only pokéball I have left. Eevee's. I toss it out and close my eyes, unable to bear it.

"So," the officer says. With my eyes closed, I have no idea what her expression is, but her voice sounds perfectly calm. "This 'imaginary' Eevee of yours isn't so imaginary after all, is it? I see that you've had time to reprogram the pokéball, then. You must have planned this well in advance. You will now recall your Chikorita, and I will escort you to your jail cell."

"Vee?" The voice of my innocent little Eevee makes me open my eyes at last.

The tiny fox-cat is standing at Officer Jenny's feet, looking up at her with huge brown eyes filled with confusion.

"It'll be ok, Eevee. You're safe now," the officer reassures. "I'll take you back to your rightful owner."

She reaches down to pick him up, but Eevee scrambles away from her hand. He looks up at me, wondering what's going on, asking for help. Even though I've had him for less than a day, he's loyal to me. I can read it all in his face. He's afraid of being taken away.

"I'm sorry, Eevee," I say. My voice chokes up a little. "I wish that I could tell them that you're my Pokémon, but they wouldn't believe me if I did."

"Vee?" he asks Officer Jenny.

"I don't understand," she says, looking down at Eevee as though seeing him for the first time. "Why are you sticking up for your thief?"

Eevee shakes his head back and forth violently. His ears flip wildly from one side of his head to the other again and again.

Officer Jenny lowers herself to the floor and looks Eevee straight in the eyes. "Did this girl steal you?" she asks solemnly.

Eevee shakes his head again. Once. Definitively. The usually upturned corners of his mouth have flattened out into an expression of utmost seriousness. He matches the officer's stare unflinchingly.

"Did her friend steal you?"

Another head shake.

"Is this girl your original trainer?"

This time Eevee nods. No hesitation. No change in expression.

"I'm so sorry," the officer says, standing back up to to talk to me. To my surprise, she sounds absolutely and completely sincere. "There must have been some misunderstanding."

She unlocks the handcuffs and begins to help me gather up my things while I stand astonished. Eevee marches up to me with a triumphant smile. He swishes his tail out proudly, like a superhero flipping his cape.

"I'm so sorry for the inconvenience," the officer continues, handing me my pokéballs.

The second officer walks in carrying my bag.

"Wait, that's it?" I ask, taking it from her. I can't believe it's over. Just like that?

"Pokémon don't lie," both officers say simply.


	13. The Caves

Now that I’m standing in front of the Pokémon Center and definitely out of sight of the police station, I turn to Chica.

“Take me to Elliot,” I say.

She’s been dancing along by my side all the way from the station, happier than a kid on Christmas morning. She’s acting as though she regrets ever having left my side, but I know that she’s no fool. Back when we were being chased, she was ahead of us, but I know she would have been watching. And when Elliot and I split up, she would have followed him. Because despite the fact that she’s unfalteringly loyal to me, she knows that I can take care of myself, and Elliot… could use her help.

So when I tell her to take me to the place where he’s hiding, she nods once and takes off running. I need to speed up to a run myself in order to keep up with her, but she’s not going nearly as quickly as she was earlier today. Thanks to our training together, she knows exactly how fast I can run without having to look back and make sure that I’m not falling behind.

As we run into the woods on the south western edge of town, I notice that it’s starting to get dark. We’ve gotten much farther than I had anticipated that we would get today, but we’ve also skipped lunch and dinner and going through that absolute ordeal has left me starving and exhausted. So when I spot Elliot cowering behind a bush, you can imagine that I am not in the best of moods.

“It’s just me,” I say, letting him hear how annoyed I am.

“Chika!” Chica chimes in as if to announce that she’s here, too.

Elliot’s head pops up.

“Hi,” he says sheepishly.

“Do you know where I just was?” I demand. “In the police station. I got ARRESTED.”

“I’m so sorry,” Elliot says, finally standing up.

“I was this close from getting thrown in jail,” I persist. “THIS close!”

“I really am sorry.” Elliot maintains his eye contact with me even as he brushes the dirt and leaves off his clothes. “And I know you didn’t have to do that.”

I know exactly what he’s talking about: the decision I made to take the “stolen” Eevee off his hands so that I would be the target instead of him. Being reminded of this makes me go quiet. The last thing I want is for him to dwell on that, to start thinking that it meant something. Because it didn’t. And I don’t want him to go around expecting nice things from me in the future.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say, brushing him off. “Let’s just figure out what we’re going to do now.”

“Did you get everything straightened out?” he asks.

“Well, I don’t know where they stand on you, but I’ve got the all-clear.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that we probably shouldn’t stick around any longer than we have to. And you should probably stay out of sight.”

“Ok, if that’s what you think is best,” Elliot says meekly.

“I do,” I reply. “You might want to start setting up camp. Hope you know how to start a fire, cause I’m heading back to the Pokémon Center.”

I motion for Chica to come along.

“Hey… you?” Elliot says, obviously wishing he could use my name.

I’m fully expecting him to ask me to stay, but he surprises me by saying, “I wish I could have come to bail you out. I kept trying to go look for you, but Chica chased me into the woods and practically threatened to attack me whenever I took a step out of line.”

“I’m glad she did,” I tell him. “You only would have made things worse.” Especially with that screwy legal system they’re operating under. I mean, they arrested me without even giving a reason, much less reading me any rights.

“I could’ve cleared the blame from you,” Elliot insists. “It was my fault.”

“Yeah? Well this way both of us can walk away.”

As I walk back into town, I reflect on that. It definitely is better that Elliot stayed hidden, but it does make me feel a little better to know that he would have come for me if he could. Even if he is an idiot sometimes, the kid’s got a good heart.

But don’t ever tell him that I said that.

* * *

Relaxed and refreshed from my night in the Pokémon Center, I'm walking through the woods to meet back up with Elliot. Chica, who's bounding along by my side as usual, seems to have spotted him. She takes off running, and I follow her straight to the little campsite where Elliot must have spent the night. He's standing off to the side of a tiny clearing, stuffing a hooded sweatshirt into his drawstring bag, but Chica zooms straight past him.

"Iri!" she says happily, skidding to a stop in front of Elliot's Pokémon.

"Vee!" the fox-cat responds, smiling back.

I can't help but smile, too. That's so cute! It's like Chica was trying to say "Eevee".

"Ready to go?" I ask Elliot.

"You bet."

"Good. Because it just so happens I was able to find us a map of the caves inside Mt. Moon."

"Mt. Moon?" Elliot asks.

"Yeah. I want to leave as soon as you're done packing. For some reason, I don't think it would be wise to spend any more time here than we have to," I say, hinting at the trouble Elliot got us into yesterday.

"No, I get that," Elliot assures me. "I just meant that I can't believe we're actually going to Mt. Moon! Isn't that where all the Clefairy are? Do you think I can catch one? Do you think we'll get to see that giant moonstone they had in the cartoon? And what about fossils? I've always wanted a Kabuto! That would be so awesome!"

"Slow down!" I say, holding up a hand. "First of all, do you know how rare Clefairy are? We'll be lucky to even see one. Second of all, don't you think you should train that Eevee of yours a little before sending it out to battle with a wild Pokémon? In case you've forgotten, it's kind of standard procedure to weaken a wild Pokémon in battle before you go around tossing pokéballs at it."

"You mean Maria?" Elliot asks.

The little fox-cat perks up her ears at the mention of her name.

"You named your Eevee Maria?" I ask.

"Sure, what's wrong with that? Come here, Maria." Elliot crouches down and claps his hands twice.

"Vee!" Maria replies. She turns away from Chica and dashes across the clearing at full speed. She stops in front of Elliot, her tail swishing happily back and forth as he pets her head.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with it, but why use a human name when there are so many much more creative names that Pokémon can use?" I point out.

Chica walks over slowly, having been left alone on the other side of the clearing.

"So, what? You think I should have called her Fluffy?"

"That doesn't exactly meet the creative part."

Chica sits down at the edge of our little group, listening to the discussion.

Elliot stops petting Maria and looks up at me. "Oh, and 'Chica' is a creative name for a Chikorita?" he asks sarcastically.

"Rita!" Chica protests, jumping to her feet angrily.

"I'd be careful if I were you," I warn. "Chica was just starting to forgive you from the last time you made her mad. You might want to try staying on her good side for once."

"Alright, alright," Elliot says, standing and holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Maybe we should just get going."

"Fine by me. Come on, Chica." I bob my head northwards, and we start walking. Elliot and Maria follow.

The woods are thin here near the edge of the city. Sunlight pours in through the gaps in the branches overhead, and the trunks are spread far enough apart that you can see a good distance in any direction. There shouldn't be too many Pokémon around here. Maybe a few bugs. A bird or two.

"So," I say to Elliot once we've been walking a while. "How was your night? You didn't have any problems camping out on your own, did you?"

"No!" he says a little too quickly.

"Uh huh. Right. I notice you didn't have a fire going when we arrived."

"I'd just put it out."

"Funny, I didn't see any ashes."

"So I spread them around." Elliot's face is slowly turning a shade of red to rival that of his hair. I know I'm giving him a bit of a hard time, but, honestly, he makes it so easy it's hard to resist.

Maria looks up at her trainer with concern.

"Eevee?" she asks innocently, turning to me.

"Oh, don't worry, Maria. I'm just having a little fun," I assure her.

* * *

"We're getting pretty close to the road," Elliot points out, taking advantage of the distraction. "Do you think I should put Maria back in her Pokéball, just to be safe?"

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

I pause for a moment to give him time. Chica calls out a quick goodbye, sticking up her leaf to wave it like a hand before Maria disappears in a flash of red light. Elliot pulls his drawstring bag off his back and drops the minimized Pokéball in before pulling the strings to tighten it again. I feel like telling him that he should get a pokéball belt like a normal trainer, but I've probably harassed him enough for one morning.

Luckily, now that we've gotten here, we seem to be the only ones on the path. Still, you can bet that we're really power walking towards that mountain. This route isn't much like the other ones. Sure, it starts out with the normal well-worn dirt, but before too long, it's just grass. We have to weave our way around a group of trees, and, for once, there are no other trainers in sight. The rocky cliffs stretching above us to the north and south are a strong indicator that we're getting into mountainous terrain. We're walking a thin strip of valley that seems to be sinking lower and lower into the rock.

"Hey, Chica, you think we'll see any Geodudes?" I ask, referring to a common rock Pokémon.

"Ka-a," she says, tilting her head to the side. That's her gesture for "maybe".

I'm not worried; I'm sure that Chica could take one on easily if it presented a threat. Knowing that, it would be cool to see one in its natural habitat. I always feel like I understand Pokémon better when I see them out in the wild, doing what they were born to do. Unfortunately, when they're resting, Geodudes look just like normal rocks. People have been known to start battles by stepping on or kicking them accidentally. So even if there are some around here, the chances are that I won't see them. Too bad we don't have more time to observe this area.

After a while, I pull out my map to see how much farther this "route" will go. Not too much farther, I see, and, apparently, it's called Route 4.

"What should we name this one, Chica?" I ask, not expecting an answer of course.

Elliot looks at me questioningly.

"I like to come up with more interesting names for all the routes we travel on," I explain, holding out the map to show him the names I've written in.

"Oh," he says. "Well, how about calling this Moonlight Pass?"

"Actually, that sounds pretty nice," I say.

"Surprised?" he smiles.

I choose not to answer.

"There!" I stuff my map into the side pocket of my messenger bag, and Chica and I take off running towards the entrance to the cave, leaving Elliot scrambling to catch up. I peer inside the entrance while I wait for him, noticing that it's pretty dark inside. In fact, it's so dark that's the only thing I can notice. I'm glad I brought a flashlight.

"Chika!" Chica calls out loudly, hearing her voice echo off the walls inside. She stares into the darkness, then up at me.

"You don't like caves much, huh?" I ask. "I don't blame you. Nothing to see and no sunlight for you to soak up. Anyway, it's just as well. I wouldn't want to lose you in the dark. I think it would be better if I put you back in your pokéball for now."

Chica nods in agreement.

"Ok. I'll see you on the other side," I quip, turning the expanded ball towards her.

Meanwhile, impatient in his excitement, Elliot's gone into the cave without me. I can hear him stumbling around, trying to regain his bearings in the darkness. I put Chica's ball back into the first spot in my belt and step inside myself, immediately snapping on the flashlight I had packed. The beam catches Elliot right in the face, making him blink.

"Oh. Do you have one of those for me?" he asks, holding up a hand to block the light.

"Nope," I say, completely unconcerned. Hey, I didn't know I would be traveling with company.

I step neatly around him, sweeping the light along the walls to get a feel of the tunnel around us. I switch the light down to the map for a second, nod, and begin walking forward purposefully. I can hear Elliot following with uncertain footsteps.

The walls are smooth here, as though they've been worn down by hundreds and hundreds of hands rubbing against them, trying to find their way in the darkness. The floor, I notice, is gently sloping downwards, leading us farther and farther into the earth. It doesn't look like the cave of the video games at all.

Unfortunately, it's not long before Elliot gets his confidence back. As he plods along behind me, he seems to feel some bizarre need to fill the cavern's emptiness with incessant chatter. With no one else around, he peppers me with stories about his life back in the real world: his happy little family of two parents and four little brothers and sisters who adore him, his golden lab puppy Rex, his best friend Joe... I tune him out sometime around the story about how Joe did the funniest thing during his last birthday party at Six Flags.

We continue our descent into the earth. The path twists and turns, widens and narrows. At times the path is so narrow that we have to squeeze through sideways, with the toes of both feet turned to the right and our backs up against the wall. On one occasion, the ceiling closes in on us, and we have to crawl forward on our bellies. I lead the way with the flashlight held between my teeth.

"Are you sure we're going the right way?" Elliot asks.

"Who's the one with the map here, you or me?" I counter.

We're standing in a large cavern, positioned right in the center of my map. There appear to be many different exits, but I'm looking for the one that will take us to Viridian City the fastest.

"I think that's it," I say, tapping the map with the edge of the flashlight. "Let's go."

"I can't believe we haven't seen any Pokémon yet," Elliot complains. "Doesn't this cave have any? I thought-"

I can tell he's warming up to deliver a huge speech, so I cut him off. "Just shut up a minute, will you? Listen."

For once, Elliot listens to me. We both pause for a moment, and in the resulting silence, we can just barely hear a fluttering noise that seems to come from overhead.

"What is that?" Elliot whispered.

"It's the 'bats," I whisper back. "It must be evening now. They've woken up and now they're flying out to feed on the tiny little nighttime bugs."

"Zubats?" Elliot asks. "Golbats?"

"Both," I reply at normal volume. "Maybe even Crobats." We've started walking again.

"Why do you call them 'bats?" Elliot asks.

"Well, they are all bats, aren't they? And they've all got 'bat' in their name. Just toss out the first part and you're good to go. It's what all the cool people do."

"Really," Elliot says, sounding skeptical. "'Cause you're the only one I've heard talking that way."

"Oh, trust me, I'm the epitome of cool."

"Uh huh. Sure. Look, do you think you could shine your light up at one of those Zubats so I can battle it?"

"With who? Maria?" I ask incredulously.

"Yes, with Maria," Elliot replies, sounding mildly insulted.

"I'm sorry, but how exactly is your tiny little Eevee going to engage a Zubat in battle? I didn't see any wings on her back, so unless a Zubat decides to come down to her, there's zero chance of it happening. What's she going to do, jump up twenty feet in the air to tackle it?"

"And anyway," I continue, "didn't I tell you that you should train your Pokémon before sending her out into a battle? You have no idea how strong she is. What if you send her out against an opponent she can't handle? Seeing as she's practically newly hatched, that's probably just about any opponent."

"Oh come on!" Elliot's actually beginning to sound angry now. "You said yourself that the Pokémon around here are pretty low level. You don't think Maria could take on one single wild Pokémon with me guiding her? This is because you don't respect me as a trainer, isn't it? You think I can't do anything right."

"That's not the reason. Look, can you please just let me handle the battles for now? There actually is a possibility that we'll run into something down here, and I just don't want Maria to get hurt. Ok?"

Silence.

"Elliot?"

"Can you at least let me hold the flashlight for a while?" he says finally.

I sigh. "Alright. It looks like it's just a straight shot from here on out, so I guess I won't need to check the map anymore. Here."

I hold out the flashlight to him.

"Thanks," he says, taking it.

"Now, there might be some trainers up in this next part," I tell him, "but as long as you don't make eye contact they can't force you into a battle."

"Got it."

We walk in silence for a while. At first, it's absolutely refreshing, but it stretches longer and longer without a word. I can't believe I'm actually missing Elliot's chatter.

I guess I just hate thinking that he's angry with me. But it's not like I have anything to apologize for. I didn't say a single thing that didn't have to be said.

Suddenly, I hear something. A clatter of rocks, as though someone or something has accidentally kicked a stone against a wall.

"Did you hear that?" I whisper to Elliot.

A low chuckle breaks out in the darkness.

"A trainer," I whisper. "Whatever you do, don't..."

But Elliot has already swept a light directly onto the source of the noise: a bearded hiker carrying a walking stick and a large backpack. Still chuckling, he looks directly at us.

Elliot meets his gaze calmly. "I challenge you to a battle."


	14. Epic Battle Scene

“Elliot, what are you doing?” I demand.

Elliot continues to face the hiker straight on, not even turning his eyes in my direction.

“Once two trainers lock eyes, there has to be a battle,” he says. “You told me so yourself.”

“You got it, kid,” the hiker says. “One battle coming up.” He sets his heavy backpack on the ground and pulls out a small kerosene lantern. “Hang on a minute while I get it lit.”

I feel a strong urge to yell at Elliot for his stupidity in shining his flashlight directly towards the source of the noise we’d heard, but I know that I can’t. I can wish that his stupidity is to blame all I want, but he and I both know that he did this on purpose. And that takes it beyond his usual brand of careless thinking.

The hiker lifts the off the glass portion of the lamp, sets it carefully on the ground, and pulls a box of matches out of a small side pocket in his backpack. He came prepared for this.

I wish he hadn’t. Breaking the government safety codes for proper lighting during Pokémon battles would give me a reason to put an end to this, but that lamp is definitely within regulations.

I grind my teeth in frustration. I can’t see any legitimate reason to stop this fight. But… maybe there’s something else I can do.

“Give me that flashlight,” I demand, twisting it out of Elliot’s hand before I’ve even finished the sentence. Deaf to his protests, I sweep the light across the tunnel wall. In a matter of seconds, I’ve found what I was looking for.

“Hey, you!”

There’s a sudden flash of light as the hiker’s lantern springs to life, revealing the face of the man I’ve just addressed. This one doesn’t seem to fit into any of the general categories for Pokémon trainers like the hiker does. He looks like, well, an ordinary guy. He’s wearing blue jeans and a polo shirt, plus a pair of glasses. He must live nearby because I don’t see him carrying any sort of bag or backpack, and he certainly doesn’t look travel worn. I would put him somewhere between twenty five and thirty, still young, but a bit old for the average adventurer. Right now, he’s looking at me in confusion.

“Yes, you!” I repeat. “Get over here!”

He walks over at once, joining the three of us clustered near the lantern.

“What is this about?” he asks.

I fold my arms across my chest as I look at him. “I propose a double battle.”

“Ooh,” the hiker says. “How exciting.”

Elliot shoots me a suspicious look.

“Hey, you wanted a battle, you got one.” I point out. “It’s not like I’m taking your place or anything. I’m just joining your team. So let’s get started.”

“Standard rules?” the young man asks.

“Standard rules,” we all agree.

The young man runs back and retrieves a lantern to match the hiker’s, and together we set up a make-shift battlefield with the lanterns marking either edge of the center line. Elliot and I stand a few feet apart facing our opponents on the opposite side, and everything is ready.

“3, 2, 1!” We all throw out our pokéballs at once. Elliot releases Maria, I pick Chica, the hiker reveals a Geodude, and the other man has a Shedinja.

“A Shedinja?” The words slip out of my mouth involuntarily. I can’t believe it. A Shedinja? It’s such an unusual choice!

All Pokémon could be considered strange from the perspective of someone from our world, but Shedinja is especially strange. It evolves from a bug Pokémon called Nincada. Nincada is kind of like a cicada; when it’s ready to evolve it forms a hard shell, and when it emerges it has wings and all that jazz. That Pokémon that emerges from the shell? That’s not Shedinja. Shedinja is the discarded shell that that Pokémon leaves behind. Yeah, that’s right. The empty shell comes to life. As a ghost Pokémon.

My eyes are immediately drawn to it. The Shedinja floating on the opposite side of the battlefield is a two and a half foot tall floating shell. Its eyes are two bulges with holes cut in them for pupils. A horizontal slit runs from the pupil to the edge of each. Those eyes never move. Its wings never move either; they’re tattered and nonfunctional. Shedinja doesn’t fly, it just floats about in a ghostly manner. In the same fashion, a white semicircle almost like a halo floats above its head.

But the creepiest part about it is the gaping hole in its back. That’s the place where the original bug Pokémon crawled out of the shell, and legend has it that anyone who stares into that hole will have their spirit stolen. Their spirit. Stolen. Yeah, this is exactly why I hate ghost Pokémon.

The hiker’s Geodude, on the other hand, is a Pokémon that I can definitely deal with. As I may have mentioned earlier, it’s just a big floating rock with arms and a face. About the size of a basketball.

So the Shedinja and the Geodude are just floating there, side by side as the light of their release fades away. On our side of the field, Maria is staring up at them with ears pulled back as though they’re the scariest things she’s ever seen in her life. Her Pokéball is lying on the ground behind her; she hadn’t even attempted to return it to him. The Shedinja’s trainer smirks.

Chica’s Pokeball lands solidly in my palm.

“Chica,” I say.

She turns to me. I slowly turn my eyes towards Maria and then back to Chica. I nod once. The message? “Protect that Eevee.” Chica nods back at me, narrows her eyes, and turns on the Geodude opposite Maria.

All of this happens in the split second after the Pokémon are released, but now it’s as though time has suddenly sped up.

Geodude and Shedinja are zooming through the air. Chica is racing to cut them off, and Maria is simply frozen with shock. Her entire body is quivering with fear. Her tail is down between her legs, her ears are drooping like a flop-eared rabbit’s, and Elliot finally seems to be regretting his decision to send her into battle. But I don’t have time to focus on Elliot right now.

“Focus on the Geodude!” I shout to Chica urgently.

She skids to a stop in front of Maria, spreading her body in a wide defensive stance, and whips her leaf around like a helicopter blade over her head. Maria’s fur ripples with the force of the stirred up air, but the Geodude just keeps coming, slamming into Chica’s head with the force of a tackle attack. At the same time, the Shedinja latches onto her back in what I can only assume is a Leech Life attack.

Chica shrieks. I can’t tell whether it’s a response to the pain or a battle cry. She throws her head back and points her wildly spinning leaf at the Geodude ricocheting backwards from the impact of its tackle. So quickly that it hasn’t even had time to move two inches, the first of her razor leaves hits it in the forehead, leaving behind a deep scratch in its rocky armor. And now it’s a veritable shower of leaves, all with tough, razor-sharp edges, pummeling the Geodude directly in the face. It shuts its eyes reflexively, and I see that it has a rocky covering even on its eyelids.

Distantly, the hiker bellows. His Pokémon can’t stand a close range attack of the grass type, and he knows it. Those leaves are cutting through the rock like no inorganic material ever could. The raised plates that cover the main part of its body are splitting like soil under the force of a growing tree root. Long rifts stretch in all directions from the center of Chica’s attack.

But Elliot seems hung up on the Shedinja biting into Chica’s back. It hasn’t gotten very deep into her skin, at least not yet, but it’s a bug type move. Bugs eat plants, and Chica’s skin is apparently plant-like enough to satisfy this bug’s sick appetite.

“Get that thing off her!” Elliot screams at Maria. He seems absolutely horrified, unable even to name an attack. A thin trail of green juice seeps out from under the sharp point of the Shedinja’s lower face, trickling onto the ground.

Maria’s eyes are wide with fear, but she springs forward at Elliot’s command and attempts to tackle the shell-like ghost. I say “attempts”. Unfortunately, normal type attacks like tackle don’t work on ghost Pokémon, and this is why: Maria springs up in a little squirrel-like hop just inches away from it… and passes directly through the shell and out the other side. No hole opens up. No damage has been done. Just for a second, the necessary piece of the Shedinja’s body has become immaterial, allowing Maria to pass through as if there’s nothing there. Like it’s nothing but a ghost.

Maria crashes to the ground on the other side. All of her fur is standing on end as though someone spiked it out with hair gel, and she's shuddering violently. Passing through a ghost must cause a really creepy sensation. I’ve seen a similar reaction from Pokémon that have been licked by a Ghastly, although in that case, it’s much stronger.

“None of Eevee’s attacks will work on it!” I shout to Elliot urgently.

“What?” he shouts back, outraged. But I have no time to explain to him that the only attacks that will work on a Shedinja have to be of the types flying, rock, ghost, fire or dark, none of which Eevee has in its arsenal.

Geodude crashes to the ground like a bag of rocks, completely knocked out by Chica’s Razor Leaf attack. As soon as Geodude is down, Chica starts bucking like a bronco, trying to dislodge the ghostly bug that’s still gouging into her back.

The hiker returns his Geodude to its Pokeball with an extra flash of light that brightens the tunnel like a camera flash.

Maria jumps to her feet and looks at Chica and the Shedinja. She bounces back and forth between her two front feet, unsure what to do but clearly anxious to help.

“Um. Um. What can I do?” Elliot asks frantically.

The hiker throws out a second pokéball to reveal a second Geodude. Standard rules dictate that he can continue replacing his Pokémon for as long as he can after each one is defeated, up to five times.

“This time we’ll use Rock Throw!” he commands.

The Shedinja finally detaches from Chica, revealing the wide but thankfully shallow cut that it’s made. Its detachment is smooth and graceful, unfortunately demonstrating with perfect clarity that Chica has not managed to throw it off. It’s done so by its own choice.

The hiker’s second Geodude bashes its back into the tunnel wall, causing a variety of small rocks to tumble down from the ceiling. It catches hold of as many as it can, stockpiling them in its muscular arms.

The Shedinja changes direction, bearing down on Maria.

“Leech life, Shedinja,” its trainer says, clearly the only calm one among us.

“Run, Maria!” I scream desperately.

“Run!” Elliot repeats.

The Geodude begins pelting Chica with the rocks, throwing each one with quick and painful precision. One hits her in the leg. A second smashes into her neck. A third catches her leaf, whipping its stem down flat on her head like no more than a blade of grass in the wind.

Shedinja is gliding along behind Maria, seemingly taunting her as she runs for her life while ducking under the shower of rocks. It can’t seriously believe that she’s a threat. It’s twice as big as her, and it knows that she can’t even touch it. It’s toying with her. Just like a ghost Pokémon to take pleasure in drawing out fear from the small and innocent.

“Helping hand!” Elliot shouts triumphantly, clearly proud of himself just for remembering a move that Eevee actually knows.

Maria makes a sharp turn towards Chica just as I shout, “Razor Leaf!” In mid step, the Eevee lifts one of her front paws. Chica gets her helicopter motion up to speed once more. The little brown paw touches Chica’s side just as she’s releasing the first of her leaves, causing a multicolored aura to erupt from the point of impact, flowing up to the stream of leaves flying outwards and urging them on faster. The colors push the leaves on faster and stronger like a sudden gust of wind, and Maria hasn’t stopped for a single moment. One tap and she’s off again while the Shedinja continues to torment her.

The leaves slam into the Geodude, but I know that this attack will have the same effect that it did on the first Geodude without even having to look. Unless this one is at a much higher level than the first, Razor Leaf aided by Helping Hand will knock it out in one hit. I have my eye on Maria, who is beginning to slow in spite of herself. Still obviously terrified, she’s panting and shaking so hard that it looks like she could topple over any second from sheer exhaustion.

“Alright, Shedinja, enough playing around,” the man says. “You can latch on now.”

It closes the distance in a split second, its beak still dripping with the green juice it sucked out of Chica’s back. It lowers its head in preparation for the slice.

“Ka!” Chica cries, launching herself into the air and directly into the path of the ghost Pokémon’s swoop. She lands directly on top of Maria; fuzzy brown fox ears tickling her belly as the Eevee stands in the middle of her four feet. And so, shielding the smaller Pokémon with her body, Chica takes the hit once more.

“Chi-kaa-ah,” she moans as the beak-like portion of its shell rips into her skin.

Maria backs out from under her and looks on with tears running from her eyes.

“What can I do to kill that thing?” Elliot demands of me. He’s angry, desperate, dismayed, I can hear it in his voice. He can’t tolerate it any more.

Chica’s front legs fold under her like a card table. She slumps forward, still conscious, but just barely. The scent coming from her leaf begins to change. So far it’s been her standard in-battle aroma—strongly herb-like, something like aloe, but mixed with something reminiscent of the huge patch of poison ivy I once stumbled into as a child—but now it’s migrating strongly to the side of the herbs, mixing so many scents that I can’t even identify a single one. But it is exceptionally strong. Inhaling deeply, I find my mind instantly more alert, as though it’s been jumpstarted. And then with a shock, I realize what it means; she’s trying to prevent herself from fainting, refusing to give up, clinging on to an uncertain consciousness.

A light flashes, telling me that the hiker has returned his fainted Geodude.

“What can I do?” Elliot demands angrily.

I’m running over my options in my head frantically. I could switch Chica out for Serendipity, but that wouldn’t be any better than sending out my own Eevee. From Tackle to Double Slap, none of the moves my Pokémon know will be effective on it. Not even Razor Leaf will work on a Shedinja.

“Well, if you don’t know, I certainly won’t help you,” the Shedinja’s trainer laughs.

“She doesn’t know Poison Powder,” I hiss. The one attack that could save us, and Chica just barely comes up short. Shedinjas are so fragile that any attack that can hit them puts them immediately out of commission. Even the weakest, puniest effort… but she doesn’t know the attack!

At least the hiker seems to be out of Pokémon. If he had another one to call out, he would have done it by now. He’s defeated, depending on his partner to finish this for both of them.

“Tell me!” Elliot roars.

“Nothing!” I scream, balling my hands into fists. “Just shut up! There’s nothing that can hit it! We don’t know flying or poison or rock or…”

I continue the list, but Elliot isn’t listening.

“Maria!” he calls out. “Kick! That! Rock!”

Finally given a purpose, Maria lets out the most ferocious, war-like cry I’ve ever heard an Eevee make and launches the rock at her feet with all the force she has.

Crunch!

I’ll probably never understand why ghosts aren’t immune to rock attacks, but that one little stone leaves a dent in the Shedinja’s shell the size of a nickel. One tiny hit. It drops off Chica like a dead weight, no longer able to hover. As soon as it hits the ground, Chica drops down to join it. Her back legs collapse as though they couldn’t have supported her for one more second. She bends her head to the floor, breathing heavily.

Frowning, the young man returns the ghost to its Pokeball. “That’s it. That was the only Pokémon I had,” he tells us. The sweetest words I’ve ever heard! The battle is over!

I run to Chica’s side, ripping a potion out of my messenger bag.

“Here,” I say, tipping the contents of the little crystal bottle into her mouth, “this will make you feel better.” I put my hand comfortingly on the back of her head.

Chica swallows eagerly, closing her eyes in pleasure. I stroke her reassuringly as I inspect the damage: two large wounds from the Leech Life, flooded with green liquid, multiple spots of bruising and discoloration from the Tackle and the rocks, and several smaller cuts and scrapes all over.

Luckily, the potion seems to be taking effect already, mainly slowing the blood-like flow of the plant juice, which is obviously the most serious injury. Still, my hand clenches into a fist as I think about the Pokémon that did this to her. I want to pummel that Shedinja’s trainer into the ground. Unfortunately, I think that may be frowned upon.

Meanwhile, our opponents have walked over to Elliot to give their congratulations and deliver our payment for winning.

“You have a good friend there, young man,” the hiker says, shaking Elliot’s hand. “I’d keep her around if I were you.”

The other man seems to be taking his defeat less gracefully. “I’ve never seen such a cheap trick! An Eevee can’t use rock-type moves.”

“No, but it can learn sand attack,” I point out. “If that’s just kicking up a bunch of sand, why not throw in a rock? A simple enough mistake. And Maria is just learning. How much experience did you say she had, Elliot?”

Mumble, mumble.

“What’s that?” the man asks.

“None,” Elliot admits, hanging his head.

“Well, I never! Beaten by a fresh-hatched Eevee. A fluke to be sure. But I’ll remember you.” He points to me. “A Chikorita that doesn’t even know Poison Powder, and it took on two Geodudes and a Shedinja virtually single-handed. Now that’s tenacity. I can respect that regardless of how things turned out. I tip my hat to you.”

He flips a stack of bills out of his wallet, lays them in Elliot’s hand, and walks off without another word.


	15. Cave Picnic

As soon as both trainers have left, Elliot walks forward.

"Is she ok?" he asks anxiously, kneeling down in front of Chica.

"Well, I gave her a potion, but we'll still need to get her to a Pokémon Center right away," I tell him. "She got hurt pretty badly."

"I'm so sorry, Chica," Elliot says. "This was all my fault."

Maria snuggles up against Chica's side comfortingly.

"Ka," Chica says, draping her leaf down over the little Eevee.

"I should put her back into her pokéball. Is Maria ok?" I ask.

Elliot gently picks her up as I send Chica shooting back into the red and white ball.

"I don't see any damage," Elliot says, looking her over carefully.

Maria holds out her front paw and mews. Elliot touches it gently, and she flinches.

"Looks like a sore paw," he reports. "Do you want to ride in my bag for a while?"

Maria shakes her head and Elliot sets her back on the ground.

"Probably from kicking the rock," I say. "That should heal in no time."

I'm glad that the Eevee isn't seriously hurt. Even though I didn't see anything happen during the battle, I was worried.

Elliot pulls the money that the trainers gave him out of his pocket.

"Here," he says, pushing it towards me, "You take it. I don't deserve any of this."

"Your Pokémon was in the battle, too," I argue.

"But I didn't do anything. Chica was the one who fought the battle. It was like those guys said, we would have been toast without her."

"What about that rock attack?" I point out. "You're the one who came up with the only possible way for us to defeat that creepy floating shell of a Shedinja. Without that, Chica would have been toast, and the rest of my Pokémon along with her."

"But it's my fault that it happened in the first place. You can at least accept it as my apology." He pushes the money towards me again.

"Look, Elliot, I'm not saying that you should take it all," I say, grabbing it from him. "You should be sorry for what happened cause you messed up. Big time. But that doesn't mean that you don't deserve half of this money because I am not lying when I say that we would have lost without that rock move." I finish counting out the money and push half of it back towards him.

"Really?" he says, taking it from me hesitantly.

"Would I lie to make you feel better?" I ask.

"I guess not," he says, smiling. "Usually you just rip me to shreds."

"And that's exactly what I'll do if you ever try to pull something like that again."

"Deal."

"Now what do you say we get something to eat? Walking through a cave all day really works up an appetite."

"Are you sure we can stop?" Elliot asks. "What about Chica?"

"Oh, as long as she's in her pokéball she'll be fine," I say. "She's just energy right now. I've never been in a pokéball myself, but I imagine it's like being held in suspended animation. You're not even aware of it."

"Ok, then," Elliot agrees. "I could go for some food."

"Vee!" Maria agrees eagerly.

"Here, Maria, you can have yours first." I pull out a box of generic brown Pokémon food and pour it into a bowl. "You're the one who's been fighting off ghost bugs and running for her life. You must be starving."

Maria gobbles up the food eagerly before I've even had time to pour her some water to go with it. I set the second bowl on the floor and she moves to it, lapping up the water with her tongue like a cat. I put the flashlight on a rock nearby to give us a nice patch of light and sit down to dig into the sandwiches I bought at the Cerulean Pokémon Center this morning.

"So," Elliot says, taking a seat on the cave floor. "That battle."

"What about it?" I ask, handing him a peanut butter and jelly.

"That was intense!" he says, accepting it.

"Welcome to the Pokémon world," I say. "Now you know exactly why I hate battling so much."

"Are all Pokémon battles like that?"

"That depends which part of it you're talking about. I assume you know that in a double battle, both Pokémon are generally supposed to share equal parts of the fighting."

"Yeah, I know that. I meant is it always that hard to watch?"

I knew exactly what he meant. "I've always thought so. I can't stand to see my Pokémon hurt. Or anyone else's really. I get so mad at trainers who act like it's all one big game. And the ones who treat their Pokémon like animals or expect them to practice battle moves night and day while they sit around doing nothing at all except telling them to work harder. It's awful!"

"But not all trainers are like that, are they?" Elliot looks concerned. "I mean, some people must battle their Pokémon for the right reasons."

I take a large bite out of my own sandwich before answering. "Sure, some people do. I guess I'm just one of those people who hates even the idea. There are so many Pokémon out there fighting and fighting and fighting and they never know anything else. There's so much more to life! So much more than getting beaten up again and again and again for no good reason. It's just so pointless."

"I agree," Elliot says quietly, "but I think I want to try battling again sometime."

"After that?" I ask, amazed.

"Well, what was really bad about that battle was what you said. Chica was trying to protect Maria, and it shouldn't be like that. She was the one taking all the hits, and then--what that Shedinja's trainer said about her tenacity—she held on for much longer than a Pokémon should, didn't she?"

"She did," I agree grimly. "It never should have gone that far, but she's so determined. And then I didn't have any good Pokémon to switch her out for."

Elliot nods. "The way I see it, I've seen how bad battling can get at its worst, and I can take it. It's not an experience I want to repeat, of course, and now that I know better I'll make sure it doesn't happen that way again. But even there I could feel how exciting it was. I could see how awesome it would be if everything went right. You know? I want to feel that again.

"And if there are people out there battling the wrong way or for the wrong reasons... well, maybe they just need a good example, you know? Someone to help them see that there's more to life than battling, to show them that you can take good care of your Pokémon and still win battles with them when you need to. Someone to show them what battles were meant to be fought for. I want to be the one to do that."

"Elliot," I say, "sometimes you amaze me."

"Too serious for ya?" He breaks out a grin. "Don't worry, for the rest of this trip I'll be back to my wonderful self. I still haven't given up on seeing that Clefairy, you know!"

I just shake my head. "We'd better get going, or it'll be midnight by the time we reach the next Pokémon Center."

I stand up, brushing the dirt and pebbles off my jeans.

"Cool, just let me put Maria back into her pokéball," Elliot says, retrieving it from the ground near where we've been sitting. He claps his hands twice. "Maria!"

No response.

"Maria?" Elliots looks around the cave wildly. "Where did she go?"

"She can't have gotten too far," I point out. "We just saw her!"

"Maria! Maria!" Elliot calls, running out into the next tunnel.

I follow with the flashlight, sweeping it across the floor as quickly as possible.

"Wait," I say, stopping the beam. "Is that...?"

On the left side of the tunnel, just up against the wall, there's a long crack in the rock opening up into a hole in the ground. I walk closer, shining the light down to try to determine how deep it is.

"No. You don't think...?" Elliot scrambles onto his hands and knees, peering down into the darkness.

I can't see anything, but I move the light all along the crack, trying to see each piece of it. "There!" I say. Against all odds, my light has momentarily hit upon something pink. A Clefable rises up from beneath the ground, pointed pink wings flapping and cone-like ears waving. In her small three-fingered hands, she holds an Eevee.

"Maria!" Elliot cries, reaching out to take her into his arms.

"Ee!" the little Eevee says, clearly quite pleased with herself.

"Fable," the fairy Pokémon says majestically, landing on the ground in front of us. She stands on two legs, with her large tail curled into its trademark swirl shape behind her. She must be over four feet tall, even larger than Serendipity. She could almost be a very small human.

"Thank you," I tell her.

She nods, glances over to Elliot and Maria, who seem happy to be reunited, and promptly hops back down into the hole, extending her wings as if to slow the fall.

"Well. They weren't kidding when they said it was a shy Pokémon," I say.

"Don't you ever wander off like that again, Maria," Elliot scolds.

Maria's ears droop and she looks up at him sadly.

"Ok, ok, I forgive you," he says. "But I'm putting you back into your pokéball right now."

"Did it fly away already?" he asks as soon as he's put Maria's pokéball safely back into his bag.

"I don't know if it was really flying so much as prolonged hopping," I say. "Like it was flapping its wings to give itself a boost, but it couldn't really stay up."

"Falling with style?" Elliot asks with a smile.

"What?"

"Never mind. The important thing is that I told you we would see a Clefairy!" Elliot pumps his fist in excitement. "I told you, I told you, I told you so!"

Yep, Elliot's back to himself all right, but I don't know if I would call it "wonderful". I frown away from his pointing fingers. "I hate to break it to you, but you do realize that was a Clefable, right?"

Elliot makes a sweeping motion with his hand. "Ah, close enough."


	16. Morning Suprise

I lean against the wall, listening to Elliot snoring away peacefully. We got to the Pokémon Center just outside the cave exit late last night after a long and exhausting trek. We were both dead tired and fell asleep as soon as we'd healed Chica and gotten keys to our rooms. Which brings us back to Elliot and his snoring.

I push off from the wall and walk over to his bedside, looking down at him. And then I pick up a pillow and smash it into his face.

"Uh-ugle." Elliot makes a sort of muffled gurgle and swings his arms up over his face clumsily.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead."

Elliot pulls the pillow off his face and squints his eyes open. "It's still dark outside," he moans. "What time is it?"

"Time for our morning run," I reply cheerfully, flipping on the lights.

Elliot struggles into a reclined sitting position, leaning heavily on his elbows. "You go on a morning run. I'm going back to sleep." He slams his head back onto his pillow and closes his eyes.

I walk over and pull it out from under him. "Do you want to be a Pokémon trainer or not?"

Elliot opens his eyes. "What does a morning run have to do with being a Pokémon trainer?"

"Come with me and you'll find out."

"What about breakfast?"

"I've already had breakfast," I inform him, "but if you want something, here."

I toss a bagel at his face, and he throws a hand up to grab it.

"Fine," he grumbles, "I'll go on a run with you, but at least give me some time to eat and get dressed first." He looks over at the door. "How did you get in here, anyway? I thought I locked that door last night."

"Oh, I have my ways," I say, smiling my best evil smile.

* * *

Ten minutes later, we're walking out of the lobby. Chica, now completely healed, is bouncing along beside me as though the battle never happened. Maria and my Eevee are running ahead, and Serendipity is waddling along behind us. The glass doors slide open upon our approach, and we step out onto the rocky ground. We're in a little square-shaped clearing, with the mountain stretching up behind us and on the left. To the right, the cliffs are beginning to level off. According to the map, that's the way to Pewter City.

"Alright," I say, "Serendipity, I don't think you'd be able to keep up with us, so I want you to run laps around this clearing until we get back."

"Chansey," Serendipity chirps.

"The rest of us will be heading toward that pass up there," I say, pointing. "We'll go part of the way towards Pewter City and then turn back. Everybody ready?"

"Chica!"

"Vee!"

"Wait!" Elliot says. "I still don't get the point of this."

"Elliot, Maria has to stay in shape if she's going to be battle-ready," I point out.

"Ok, so she can go on a run, but why do I have to come?"

"Elliot, how can you expect your Pokémon to have respect for you unless you're willing to do whatever you ask them to do? Training together builds a special bond between people and their Pokémon. There's nothing else like it. You'll see."

"Ok," Elliot agrees reluctantly, and I take off.

Chica and I quickly gain the lead position, running side by side. It makes me happy to see Chica speeding along at an easy gallop, perfectly matching the speed of my own two-legged jog. It feels good to run, and even better with my partner at my side.

The pathway narrows as we approach the pass, allowing room for only one at a time. Chica picks up speed and leads the way. The hard ground beneath our feet begins to soften, showing bits of soil and thin patches of weeds struggling for life. We burst through the pass into a small clearing now filled with plant life. On the left side, the grass is tall and thick, exactly the kind that small Pokémon like to hide in. All around it, though, the grass is shorter, perfect for continuing our run.

Chica turns to the right, and I follow, speeding up to match her pace. Of course, she's headed straight for the patch of wildflowers nestled away in the far corner. Blue and red and yellow, each bloom smaller than my thumb, but they are many and very beautiful. Chica dives into them eagerly, but I catch her attention and make a circling motion with my finger, indicating that we should turn around and start heading back.

As we do so, I see that the Eevees have followed closely behind us. They, too, look delighted by the prospect of running through the wildflowers. But where's Elliot? I frown, looking left and right as Chica and I dash back the way we came.

Ah, there he is. Just now emerging from the pass. He's not going very fast. Chica and I push past him, and, out of the corner of my eye, I spot him turning short to follow us back through. Cheater.

We make good time back to the Pokémon Center, where Serendipity is completing her final lap. Elliot collapses onto the ground.

"How?" he wheezes. "How do you do that?"

"It's called running," I say sarcastically.

"You're... practically a Pokémon yourself! How can you be that good? It's not like I run cross country or anything, but I'm not out of shape. And you don't even look tired! How are you doing that?"

"Believe it or not, Elliot, it's not as difficult as you make it seem."

The two Eevees skid to a stop beside us, tumbling over and over each other playfully. I watch them with a smile, but it quickly turns into a frown.

"Hey, Elliot?"

"What?" he asks, sitting up but still breathing heavily.

"Does Maria's fur look a little... darker to you?"

Hearing her name, Maria freezes and looks up at me questioningly.

Elliot climbs to his feet and walks over to her. "Now that you mention it, her fur does look a little darker than your Eevee's. I wouldn't have noticed unless they were right next to each other, but her eyes look a little red, too. Do you think she's sick?"

"We'd better go ask Nurse Joy. Serendipity, Eevee, Chica, wait here," I order.

Elliot gently lifts Maria off the ground and carries her in to the Pokémon Center. Completely ignoring my orders, Chica marches in the door after us. Nurse Joy is stationed in her usual place behind the counter.

"Nurse, will you take a look at my Eevee?" Elliot asks, setting Maria down on the counter.

Nurse Joy looks Maria up and down, feeling the muscles along her leg and gently turning her to look into her eyes.

"Oh, yes, I'd say the exposure was successful," she concludes.

"Exposure!"

"Yes, to the moon stones inside Mt. Moon. That is why you went inside, isn't it? Congratulations, you'll soon have an Umbreon on your hands."

"Umbreon?" Elliot asks with wide eyes.

"But Eevees don't evolve with moon stones," I argue. "You have to train them at night when they have a high friendship level."

"Friendship level?" Nurse Joy asks. "You mean like the way that Chanseys evolve? No, I'm sorry, whoever told you that was sadly misinformed. Eevees evolve through exposure to different types of stones. A thunder stone produces Jolteon, a fire stone produces Flareon, a sun stone produces Espeon..."

Eevee is the one Pokémon that can evolve into several different forms depending on the conditions. In the Pokémon games, the evolution to Umbreon works exactly the way I described, while Espeon evolves with high friendship during the day. Other forms like Jolteon do evolve using evolutionary stones in the game, but I wasn't prepared for this.

"An Umbreon!" Elliot repeats in wonder.

"So there's nothing wrong with her," I say, just to be sure.

"Nothing at all," Nurse Joy smiles. "All you have to do is wait for the transformation to be completed."

"How long will that take?" Elliot asks.

"It depends on the level of exposure. Did she actually touch the moon stone?"

"I don't know," Elliot admits. "She got away from us for a minute back in the cave. That must have been when it happened."

"Well, then you'll just have to wait and see. Good luck!" Nurse Joy waves us out, indicating the line that has started to form behind us.

Elliot and I walk back out the door to where Serendipity and my Eevee are anxiously waiting. I quickly explain the situation to them.

"So, Maria, it looks like you're going to be an Umbreon," I say.

"Vee?" she asks.

"Haven't you ever seen an Umbreon? They're dark type Pokémon. Big and black with red eyes and yellow rings that glow in the dark. They can learn powerful moves like Pursuit and Faint Attack that make them really good in battle."

Maria looks at me with wide eyes. Her ears are nearly flat against her head.

"What's wrong, Maria?" Elliot asks. "Don't you want to be an Umbreon?"

"Ee-ee-vee!" Maria says, shaking her head back and forth.

"But... she's already turning into one," Elliot says, looking at me. "What can we do?"


	17. Battle Practice

"But isn't there any way to stop the evolution?" Elliot insists.

"Maybe if we used an Everstone?" I suggest, stealing a glance down at the little blue stone hanging around Chica's neck.

We're back inside the Pokémon Center lobby, ignoring the crowd of people behind us muttering in annoyance. The building has turned into a hive of activity since we got back from our run; everyone else is finally awake and eager to begin their day. At least half seem to be headed out, either to the caves or to Pewter City, backpacks fully stocked, maps in hand, anxious to turn in their keys and go. Others seem to have managed to injure their Pokémon in battle already. One boy in particular is bouncing up and down with impatience, saying something about a rematch.

"I'm sorry," Nurse Joy tells us, "but I really can't help you. Most people are happy to see their Pokémon evolve. If not, they keep their Pokémon away from evolutionary stones. I don't remember ever hearing of a case where a trainer's Pokémon was exposed accidentally, certainly not one where the trainer tried to have the evolution reversed. And I don't know if an Everstone will have any effect once the transformation has begun."

"Please," Elliot begs, "You have to help us somehow."

Maria looks up at Nurse Joy with puppy dog eyes so big and sad they would melt your heart.

"Well," she says finally, "I don't have the answers, but there is a large museum in Pewter City. Maybe one of the scientists there can help you."

"That's just down the road from where we ran this morning," I inform Elliot.

"Oh, thank you, Nurse Joy!" Elliot beams, swinging Maria up from the counter and into a hug.

"Ee!" she squeals, sounding happy for the first time since we heard the news.

We step away from the counter to make room for the boy who wants a rematch and cut through the long line to the PC machine.

"Well, that changes things," I say to myself.

"What was that?"

Elliot puts Maria down as we reach the escalator. She and Chica bound up ahead of us, too impatient to stand in one place and let the machine do the work for them.

"I was planning on staying here for a few days," I clarify, leaning against the moving bannister. "We seem to have been doing a lot of racing around from place to place. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to settle for giving you a crash course."

"A crash course?" Elliot looks at me in surprise.

"Well, after that last fiasco of a battle, it's about time someone showed you how a real trainer does it. You've got a lot to learn, but I guess we'll just have to cram in the essentials and hope that you won't make a complete fool of yourself if we get dragged into a double battle on the road."

"Great!" Elliot exclaims happily. "But... can't it wait till we get to Pewter City?"

We step off the escalator and start walking back to our rooms. I look at Elliot for a minute, pretending to consider his question.

"No," I say conclusively. "You need help now. Plus, I really need the time to do my laundry."

"Laundry? You're concerned about your laundry?"

We stop outside the doors.

"Of course," I reply, tossing my room key up and down nonchalantly. "Learning the proper laundry procedure is absolutely vital to being a good trainer, you know. Lance the Dragon Tamer once said that he never could have made it into the Elite Four if he hadn't found the perfect brand of detergent to wash his lucky socks."

"You just made that up!" Elliot accuses.

I raise my eyebrows as if to say, "Oh, did I?"

"Tell you what," I say, "we'll make that your first lesson."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, I'm freshly showered and ready to go. I step out into the hall with an armful of clothes and immediately hear Elliot groan.

"You were serious. You were actually serious," he says in disbelief.

"Of course. Did you think I would joke about something so incredibly serious?"

I walk off down the hall with Chica and Maria close behind, forcing Elliot to tag along. We take the stairs this time, down, down, down, all the way to the basement. I pull open the big metal door and allow Elliot to step inside ahead of me.

"Ok, this place has more washing machines than I've ever seen in my life," Elliot admits.

The laundry room is almost busier than the lobby. As we step in, there are at least twenty different trainers here, spread out over rows and rows of sparkling white washers and driers, almost every one of which is currently in use. A girl in a tank top pushes in behind us with a basketful, and before the door has a chance to swing shut, a young man grabs it on his way out.

"There," I say, pointing to a pair of open washers down at the far wall. We hurry over before someone else can take them. I open the doors to washing machines 11 and 12 and begin piling in my clothes.

"Now, you want to separate your whites from your colors," I instruct Elliot.

"I know that," he says, rolling his eyes.

"Good," I reply, pouring in a measure of detergent.

I reach into my pocket.

"Now these," I say, holding up a little gold-colored coin, "are called Pidgey Pieces."

"Yes, I do know a Pidgey when I see one," Elliot interrupts, gesturing to the picture stamped into the coin's surface.

I continue as if he hadn't spoken. "Each one is worth twenty five Poké Dollars, and they're the only coins there are. Well, technically each region has a different version of the coin with their own picture on it, but what I mean is that this is the only value."

"Don't you mean they're worth a quarter of a dollar?"

"No. You see, money in the Pokémon world is worth a lot less than your standard dollar. They don't even make bills in anything less than increments of 100, which is equivalent to about 1 American dollar. That's why everything seems to be so much more expensive here."

"Uh huh, fascinating. Can we go train now?"

I press the button for a normal cycle and set the alarm on my watch to go off 5 minutes before the time displayed.

"Alright, let's go."

Elliot takes off like a shot, with Maria prancing along behind. I look at Chica and shake my head.

"Sure. Now he wants to run."

* * *

Back in the clearing, Elliot, Chica, and I stand on the rocky ground. Maria and Serendipity are standing off to the side, deep in conversation. Ever since Maria found out about the Umbreon thing, she and Serendipity have been talking a lot. I wish I could understand what they're saying, but if we can't understand Maria, it's good that she has someone she can talk to.

"Alright," I announce, "since we only have limited time and we already had our morning workout, why don't we jump right into battle practice?"

"Yes!" Elliot says, pumping his fist in the air. "Now that sounds fun."

Maria's ears perk up. She runs back over to Elliot and crouches down in front of him playfully, like a cat getting ready to pounce on a bit of string.

I slide the fourth Pokéball out of my belt and toss it out.

"We'll have Maria face off against..." I pause, suddenly remembering that I still haven't given my Eevee a name.

Eevee looks up at me for a second. Then, he slowly walks over to Serendipity and taps her with his paw.

"Chance," she says.

"What?"

Eevee prods Serendipity with his paw again.

"Chance," she repeats.

And then, to my surprise, Eevee lifts up his front paw and points to himself.

"Did your Eevee just name himself?" Elliot asks in astonishment.

"I guess he did," I say, plenty surprised myself. "Alright, Chance, then. Will you fight this practice battle against Maria?"

"Vee," he nods, sounding quite pleased with himself. He walks back over to his place between me and Maria.

"So you know the basics of a battle," I say to Elliot. "If anyone challenges you, just stick to the standard rules for now. There are other ways to battle, but we don't have time for that.

"The battle starts as soon as the Pokémon are released. If you don't give any commands, Maria will just do whatever she thinks best. That can be fine, but, trust me, two heads are better than one when it comes to battle strategy. Think of yourself like a coach for a sports team-it's your job to call the plays."

"Got it."

"Good. So we've seen that Maria knows Helping Hand and Tackle. Those are good basic moves, but Helping Hand only works in double battles. Let's see what other attacks Maria and Chance know.

"Chance, use Tail Whip," I tell him.

Out on the field, Chance flicks his tail back and forth.

"Maria, use Growl," Elliot orders.

Maria turns her head back to her trainer.

"Vee?" she asks.

"Now, Chance! Tackle!"

Chance immediately takes a running dive, crashing into Maria just as she turns her head back to the battle. The impact knocks her off her feet, and Chance bounds back to his side of the field as she struggles to get back up.

"Sorry, Maria," I say, "but you can't lose focus."

"Ok, so she doesn't know Growl," Elliot says. "How about Sand Attack?"

Maria looks at the ground with a frown of concentration. Then, her face lights up and she kicks-sending a marble-sized black rock flying towards Chance's head.

He dodges easily, and the stone whizzes past his ear.

"Ee!" he protests.

"Uh, Maria," I say, "that's not exactly a Sand Attack."

Her ears droop in disappointment.

"That's ok," I reassure. "You can't actually do a proper Sand Attack when there isn't any dirt or sand."

"Oops," Elliot says. "My bad."

"That's why we're practicing."

"Ok, then, Maria, let's see your tackle!"

Instead of going straight into a run like Chance did, Maria falls into a series of hops-left, right, left, adjusting to each of Chance's attempts to move in the opposite direction. Each time she gets closer and closer.

She's faking him out, I realize, but I have no time to advise him before Maria takes a final leap, smashing right into Chance as he tries to readjust from her last feint.

"That was good, Maria," Elliot praises.

"It was," I agree.

Serendipity claps from the sidelines as Chance climbs back to his feet. "That's going to be your main move until she learns Quick Attack. Now, the battle will be over if Maria faints, you know that, but according to standard rules, the definition of "fainting" is that the Pokémon lies motionless on the ground for 5 seconds or they lose consciousness, whichever comes first. So if Maria is lying still, you can return her. You can also forfeit any time you want if you realize that she's way outmatched or if something goes wrong."

"How do I do that?" Elliot asks.

"Just say, 'I forfeit.' What did you think?"

Beep, beep, beep, beep!

"Oh," I say, looking down at my watch, "it's time to pick up my laundry."

"Seriously? We're in the middle of a battle here!"

"It's a practice battle," I correct. "And we're basically done. There really aren't that many attacks that Eevees know to start out with. When we get back, we can practice her Pokéball return move. Then we're off to Pewter City to see the science whiz."

Elliot nods. "I just hope he can help us."

"Ee," Maria agrees quietly.


	18. Rain

"Ready to go?" Elliot asks, carefully slinging his bag over his shoulders so as not to disturb Maria, who's already perched happily inside. She wiggles her ears happily as it settles into place, looking extremely comfortable with everything but her head snuggled inside the cloth.

"Yep, we can leave just as soon as I stop by the kitchen," I tell him.

"The kitchen?"

"Yeah, I stopped by this morning to ask if I could use their stove to cook a Chansey egg. The chef was very nice. He offered to do the cooking for me and store it in their fridge until I was ready to come pick it up."

I lead the way through the lobby and into the connecting restaurant.

"Here we are." I push open the swinging door and step inside the kitchen. Except for one woman in an apron flipping pancakes, the place seems pretty quiet, a huge difference from the bustle I saw earlier this morning, just before they opened for breakfast.

"Hey, Dennis!" I say, waving.

Dennis is standing near a group of cooks and waiters, talking animatedly about something, but he looks up when I call his name.

"Welcome back!" he says, smiling. "I've got a surprise for you!"

He walks over to the enormous refrigerator and pulls out a silver tray loaded with...

"Egg salad sandwiches!" he proclaims. "I thought it would make the perfect traveling food for you and your friends."

"Oh, no. I can't accept this," I say, looking at the stack of perfectly cut pre-wrapped sandwiches and wondering how long it took him to make them all. "At least let me pay your for your trouble."

"No, it was my pleasure," Dennis insists. "It's not often that I get to cook with Chansey eggs. Besides, it's the least I can do for a young lady so charming as yourself."

"Charming?" Elliot mutters.

I elbow him in the side. "Thanks so much, Dennis!"

I accept the platter and zip open the front pouch of my messenger bag to carefully stack the sandwiches inside.

"Any time, any time!"

As we prepare to head out, the cooks call out their goodbyes. "Good luck! Take good care of Chica for us!"

* * *

Later, as we retrace the steps of our run that morning, Elliot asks, "What did you say to those guys?"

"Sorry, what?" I ask, looking up. Chica and I had been engrossed in a contest to see who could make the weirdest face, and I hadn't really been paying attention enough to know what he was talking about.

Now, seeing that Elliot and I are probably going to be talking for a while, Chica turns to Chance and starts chatting with him quietly in Pokémon language.

"Those guys in the kitchen," Elliot clarifies. "You seem to have made quite an impression on them."

"They're just nice guys," I say, wondering what his point is.

"Well, yeah, but I just didn't expect..." his voice trails off.

"What? You don't think I can be friendly and charming when I want to be? You know, I can actually be a pretty cool person when I don't have to deal with certain annoying kids," I say, smiling to show that there's no hard feelings. "There's a lot that you don't know about me."

"So... why don't you tell me?" Elliot suggests. "I've already told you all about my life. Maybe you could tell me something about yours."

From her perch inside Elliot's bag, Maria perks up her head and looks at me with interest.

"Oh, yeah," I say, remembering Elliot's constant chatter inside Mt. Moon, "You and your four adorable little brothers and sisters."

"Why do you sound annoyed?" Elliot asks in surprise.

"I'm not annoyed."

"You are! What's wrong?"

Chica and Chance stop their conversation abruptly.

"Chikah?"

"I'm fine, Chica," I sigh. "Elliot, can we not talk about this?"

"Why, do you see someone else?" Elliot looks around to be certain that we're alone. We're nearing the pass we went through this morning, but, other than the odd Spearow flying overhead, there's nothing else in sight. I am glad that Elliot's finally taking this "keep the real world a secret" thing seriously.

"It's not that," I tell him.

"Then what is it? We've been travelling together for three days now, and I still don't know the first thing about you. You won't even tell me your name!"

"Would you believe me if I said that I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you?"

Elliot's eyes widen. "Are you a ninja?"

"I'm not a ninja," I roll my eyes. Clearly, he didn't get that I was joking.

"But it would explain everything!" he exclaims. "The way you can run so fast, the fact that you never seem to get tired, all these secrets..."

"Elliot! I'm not a ninja!"

"Ok, ok. What is it, then? Am I just supposed to go around calling you 'She-who-must-not-be-named?'"

"Don't call me that!"

We round another corner and start walking along a path that will take us westward.

"Mystery Girl? Little Miss Nameless? Ann Nonymous?" Elliot suggests.

"No! Just call me..."

"What?"

"Just call me nothing! Nothing at all!" I shout out in frustration.

"Oh," Elliot says. His face clears for an instant before resuming an expression of annoyance. "Very nice to meet you, Nothing At All."

He makes a mock bow from the waist.

"Vee!" Maria protests as the bag on his back suddenly turns sideways. She almost slides right out.

"Oops, sorry," he says, straightening back up.

Maria resituates herself and gives a little sniff. Quite the princess.

"Come on," Elliot says seriously. "Just tell me one thing about yourself and I'll shut up about it."

"All you need to know about me is that I got here about a year ago, I lived in Fuchsia City until I caught Serendipity, and I'm looking for just one city or town in this stupid world that's complex and realistic enough that I wouldn't get bored out of my mind living there. There must be one of those out here somewhere, and as soon as I find it, I'm staying there."

"Wait, that's why you're traveling around?" Elliot asks, suddenly looking troubled.

"Yeah. Why? Did I fail to mention that?" I ask bitterly.

"You kind of did." Elliot frowns, clearly unhappy about what I just said.

"What did you expect? Some grand journey to become a Pokémon master? A quest to defeat all eight gym leaders and enter the Pokémon League tournament? A marvelous attempt to catch every Pokémon there is? Some vague ambition to become the greatest trainer there ever was? Sorry to disappoint, you, kid, but I am none of those things. So if you were looking for some great hero, you can go practice your little sidekick thing somewhere else!"

I begin to walk faster, picking up my pace to the point where I'm almost running down the path, not even noticing that the sky has suddenly grown dark. We're now long past the place we reached at the far point of our run this morning.

"Chikar?" Chica asks, bounding up beside me. He voice is full of concern as she looks up at my face.

"Hey! Wait up!" Elliot calls out. "What did I say?"

His voice already sounds far away. Good. I keep speeding forward. The sky opens up and rain starts to fall in huge splattering drops. I pull out Chance's pokéball and turn around briefly to return him to it. With all that fur, he must hate getting wet.

"Do you want to go back in, too?" I ask Chica.

She shakes her head, still looking at me steadfastly. She doesn't want to do anything until I answer her question. I can see it in the determined set of her face.

I open my mouth to explain, but, just in time, I spot a trainer ahead-a young kid in a baseball cap and bright yellow shorts. I immediately drop my gaze to Chica.

"Is he staring at me?" I ask her.

She nods.

I'm in no mood for a battle right now. I set my eyes on the ground. Little by little, the rain is soaking into my clothes, dripping down the ends of my hair. As I march past the kid with my head lowered, the water runs down my forehead and falls from somewhere near my eyebrows. I can hear Elliot catching up behind me, footsteps pounding against wet rock.

"Hey, I know you," the boy says suddenly. "You're the girl with the Chikorita! My older brother was east of Vermillion City when you went through the meadow there. He told me you were afraid to battle anyone. Are you a coward?"

Slowly, I raise my head, not caring that the water starts to run into my eyes.

"I am not a coward," I say evenly, staring him straight in the eyes.

"Prove it."

"I could beat your entire team with just this Chikorita." My voice, I notice, does not sound angry in the slightest. Instead, it's slow, each word clearly enunciated, but meanwhile I'm glaring at him with more ferocity than an angry Arbok. (Spell it backwards- kobra. Cobra. A 140 pound purple snake you do not want to mess with.)

The pounding steps behind me suddenly come to a stop. "What are you doing?" Elliot asks, doubling over to catch his breath. Rain drips down from the hair on top of his head. I notice he's returned Maria to her pokéball.

"Just watch," I say shortly.

With slow, deliberate movements, I reach around my waist and unclasp my pokéball belt. I hold it in one hand with the buckle swinging over the ground. Then I toss the long strap into Elliot's hands.

"You can hold on to this for me. I won't be needing it."

Elliot's mouth gapes open.

"Yes," I say, answering the question he didn't ask. "I know exactly what I'm doing.


	19. Secrets

Attracted by the sound of our conversation, a boy runs up from behind the next bend. He looks from the boy to Elliot to me and runs back towards where he came from.

"Hey, everybody!" he calls out. "Calvin's about to battle someone!"

I hear the call repeated, passed down along the path like a big game of telephone, and a number of trainers come running, most of them kids about Calvin's age, a mix of boys and girls. They gather around excitedly, forming a semi-circle around us.

"Standard rules?" Calvin asks, pokéball in hand.

"No."

"No?" the boy looks almost as stunned as Elliot, who's still standing off to the side, completely speechless as the crowd forms around him.

"No," I repeat firmly. "Chica can beat your whole team single-handed and she can do it without any commands."

Chica looks up at me for a second as if to ask whether I'm sure about this, but she nods and plasters on a look of determination.

"You want to do this battle without commands?" Calvin splutters.

"You got a problem with that?"

"No!" he says, a little too quickly. "Of course not!"

"Let's get started, then. I don't have all day." I tap my watch with two fingers to emphasize the point.

"Ok."

Calvin tosses out his pokéball to reveal an Ekans, who stretches up to catch the pokéball in its mouth before spitting it back to its trainer. Like a snake with an egg, only an ordinary snake would have swallowed it whole. Like its evolved form Arbok, Ekans can be spelled backwards to read "snake." That's what it is, a six foot long snake-purple with a yellow underbelly, a single golden stripe, and a rattle on its tail. Its eyes are yellow and lidless, with thin, slit-like pupils.

I can understand why he chose to send out this one first. Ekans is a Poison type, which gives it an advantage over Chica, whose plant-like body is especially sensitive to poison. Normally in a battle, he wouldn't have been able to get this advantage because he wouldn't have known what Pokémon I was going to start out with, but it's a risk I accepted when I proposed the terms of the battle.

"The battle starts as soon as the countdown is complete," the boy says nervously.

I nod in acknowledgement, and we begin.

"3, 2, 1!"

Ekans is off like a shot, slithering towards Chica faster than I could have thought possible for a snake, but she's not standing there helpless. She's running straight for it, completely unafraid.

I smile. The last time Chica battled, she was on the defensive, trying to keep anything from happening to Maria. Now, she can put on the all-out offensive that is her signature battle style. She's a tough fighter, and this snake is about to learn that the hard way.

Ekans lunges towards her, going in for a bite, but, quicker than the blink of an eye, she's gone. Ekans struck so fast that I couldn't even see it move, but its mouth closes on empty air. Chica lands on the opposite side of its body, having hopped out of the way just in the nick of time.

Ekans twists around, struggling to catch her with its head or its body, squirming this way and that as Chica hops, hops, hops, growling and staring it straight on like an oversized mongoose.

Finally, the snake pauses with its head turned sideways. Just a second of hesitation, as though it's momentarily lost sight of her, but it's enough. She tackles, exploding with full force into the top of its skull. Its head snaps to the side before wiggling around as though it's suddenly gotten very dizzy, spitting poison from its mouth in every direction. A splatter of tiny brown spots appear on Chica's neck where the spit has made contact with her skin, but they don't spread the way I would have expected. It takes me a second, but then I realize that the rain must have washed her clean.

"No!" Calvin cries out from the opposite side of the battlefield, seeing the uselessness of his Pokémon's attack.

Chica barely seems to know that she's been hit, continuing her strategy as though nothing has happened. She takes advantage of the dizziness caused by the snake's head injury, darting back and forth in front of it as though offering a challenge to come and get her.

The snake traces her with its eyes for a second or two. Then it snaps its head down... and bashes into the rock!

Chica has made a flying leap, landing with the full force of her 14 pounds directly on the base of its neck, just behind the head. She puts her two left feet on the ground beside it and digs in her right, holding the position. Ekans thrashes on the ground, trying to force her off. It throws its head left and right as far as it can go, but whatever position it puts itself in, it cannot reach her. Nor can it dislodge her.

Its breathing begins to rasp, as though Chica's weight is restricting its air supply. Finally, it gives up and lies still, conceding defeat.

Chica steps off so that Calvin can return it.

"Second round," he says nervously, throwing out his next pokéball. "We'll start same as before."

This time the pokéball reveals a small Rattata. Also purple, this mouse-like rodent bounces the pokéball off the top of its head and stands awaiting the countdown.

It's about a foot tall, one third the size of Chica, with tiny claws, rounded ears, and two large teeth at the front of its mouth. Its lightly-colored fur and short whiskers tell me it's a girl. Another Pokémon whose most powerful attack is its bite.

"3, 2, 1!"

This time Chica stands her ground, watching the mouse run towards her. She knows it must come to her, since its only attacks require physical contact. She watches and waits. Then, just as it's coming close, she whips her leaf into motion and launches a storm of razor leaves.

For a second, the mouse is completely obscured by flying bits of green. Then, it comes back into view, stumbling, with most of its body covered in little red cuts. Both its whiskers have been cropped short, and its teeth display a thin green line going across them as though a leaf collided there with such force that it left a temporary stain.

It regains its balance and runs forward, but Chica is now running straight towards it as well. The two collide head-on, and Rattata, being much smaller and, at the moment, also slower, is thrown backwards.

I wince as it lands with a painful thud and starts to get up, only to collapse back to the ground. Normally, the attack wouldn't have done so much damage, but the rock below us provided a hard landing. Between the rain and the multitude of shallow cuts, its fur is soaked. It looks completely beaten.

Calvin returns it with a grimace and holds out his hands in surrender.

"You win."

I turn to the crowd of trainers.

"Anyone else want to try?" I demand. "Or are you going to let my friend and I pass through in peace? We happen to be in a bit of a hurry."

The kids mutter to each other softly and slowly draw away, shaking their heads to show that they won't be challenging me.

I turn to Elliot and hold out my hand for my pokéball belt. He's still clutching it in the exact same position it was in when he caught it, as though he'd been turned to stone for the duration of the battle, but when he sees me reaching for it, he snaps out of it and hands it over.

Calvin walks over and hands me my prize money.

"I guess I was wrong. You're really good. What's your name?" he asks in awe.

"Wouldn't you like to know."

I turn my back, but already I can feel my anger fading away. I really do hate seeing other Pokémon hurt. I keep picturing that poor Rattata, even though I know that Chica went easy on her razor leaf attack. She hit from a close distance, but I have a feeling that it had to do with the fact that her leaves are less accurate if she's throwing them with a smaller than normal force. Those cuts would have been much deeper if she was attacking with everything she had. Just look at the way they cut through the rocky skin on that Geodude yesterday.

"I can't wait to tell my brother about this," Calvin says as he walks off in the direction we came from.

As soon as he's gone, Elliot clears his throat. "I, um, thought you didn't like battling."

"I don't. But sometimes it's justified."

He nods. "So, about before..."

"Why don't we find a place to get out of the rain?" I suggest, leading the way to a nearby overhang that should shelter us for a while. There's just room for us to fit under if we crouch down.

Elliot and I sit down on the miraculously dry rock beneath the shelf, and Chica squeezes in between us.

"You want to hear this, too, don't you?" I say.

"Ka!" she nods firmly.

"So. Did you get all your anger out back there?" Elliot asks. He's looking at me strangely, as though he's not sure what I'm going to do next.

"I think so," I say cautiously. "Although, technically it was Chica who did the battling. I just stood there and watched."

"How did you know she could do it?" he asks. "Or were you just saying that?"

"I did know that she would win. We're on Route 3 right now. In game terms, that means level 10 or 11 pokémon. These trainers are just kids. If I had to guess, I'd say that Chica's around 14 or 15, easily able to handle them. Plus, she's smarter than any Pokémon I've ever met, and I'm not just saying that because I'm her trainer."

Elliot nods. There's an awkward silence.

"Elliot, you're looking at me like you think I'm going to bite your head off."

"Aren't you?"

I sigh. "If you start bugging me again, yeah, I just might."

"What did I say?" he asks. "If it was about the reason for this journey, you don't understand-"

I cut him off with a shake of my head. "I don't like talking about my past," I say shortly.

"About your past?" he seems surprised. "Ok, I guess I can understand that, but I wasn't asking for a lot. Just one thing about yourself, that's what I said. It didn't have to be big. Just your first name. That doesn't have anything to do with your past. It's just a name so that I know what to call you. Do you not trust me even with that?"

"Ok, Elliot," I say, feeling the anger bubble up inside all over again. "You want to know my name? Do you want to know why I won't tell you my name? It's because I DON'T know it!"

"Ah?" Chica gasps.

"You... what?"

"That's right, I don't know my own name!" I shout, feeling tears streaming down my face to mix with the lingering drops of rainwater. "Are you happy now?"

Chica reaches up to wipe my face with the soft tip of her leaf. I let out a sob and pull her into a hug against my chest. Already I feel better for the small release. The tears slow.

"I am so sorry," Elliot says. "I had no idea. I was just joking around. I thought..."

"I know," I say, happy to hear that my voice sounds smooth and even again. I wipe away the last tear. "It's not your fault."

"I won't ask you anymore," he promises.

"No, now that you know, you might as well hear it all. You and Chica both. I should have told her a long time ago."

I set her back down on the ground so she can see me as I explain.

"You both know that I came here from the real world. Our world." I point to Elliot and myself for Chica's benefit. "It was about a year ago. Just an ordinary day. I went to bed in one world and woke up in another. I thought it was a dream at first-I had been thinking about Pokémon that day."

"Why?" Elliot asks.

"Oh, I found my old copy of Pokémon Blue stuck in the liner of my backpack. I thought I'd lost that thing. But I didn't actually play it. I just stuck it away somewhere and went off to do something else. So I can't see why that's important except that it explains why I thought it was some weird dream."

"Chi?"

"I'll explain to you later, Chica. In our world we play games based on yours. It's complicated."

"So you thought it was a dream," Elliot repeats.

I nod. "Until I realized it wasn't. I was in the Fuchsia City Pokémon Center, wearing strange clothes, and on a chair next to the bed was this messenger bag, full of other clothes and a pokéball belt and a bit of money and some food. I remembered everything from my life before, but I didn't know my name. And no one there could tell me who I was or how I got there."

"It was kind of like that for me, too," Elliot says. "Only I knew my name, and I had my own clothes and stuff, and I didn't get a pokéball belt..." he flushes. "So I guess it wasn't actually like that at all."

"And," I say, "there were other things, too. Things about me that seemed different. And the only explanation I could come up with was that something had put me here, and, whatever it was, it wanted me to be a Pokémon trainer. And the only reason I could think of that it would take away my name was that," I take a deep breath, "it was turning me into a main character like in the video games. You know, where the player gets to fill in the name at the beginning? Only I was in the wrong spot."

I feel one last tear slide down my cheek.

"And that's when I decided that I wasn't going to be who this thing that put me here wanted me to be. I am going to do things my way whether it likes it or not!"

"So when I was talking to you today..."

"You really hit the trifecta," I laugh.

Somehow, it feels so much better to have all of that off my chest. I lean back against the cliff, feeling all the tenseness in my body slip away. My stomach rumbles.

"Why don't we eat some lunch?" I suggest, unzipping the front pocket of my bag and pulling out the sandwiches, plus a few small apples. I roll one over to Chica and pass a sandwich to Elliot. "Maybe the rain will have stopped by the time we're done."

"You know," Elliot says, "you wouldn't have gotten quite so wet if you'd put on that hat of yours. I don't know, but it looks water-proof to me."

"You know, I completely forgot about it! How did I not think of that?"

We all laugh.


	20. The City

"There's another one!" I say, pointing to a little girl standing on the side of the path. She's staring at me. Her pokéballs are in a pile on the ground, which is also really weird. It's like she's trying to prove that she's not trying to lock eyes in order to start a battle.

"Why do they keep looking at me like that?" I ask Elliot. One weird kid is enough, but that has to be the fifth one I've seen since lunchtime.

Elliot examines the girl carefully. "I think they admire you."

"What?" I say disbelievingly. "No."

It's got to be something else. I give the girl a tentative wave. Immediately, her eyes go wide and she freezes in place. Maybe she's scared of me? Between that possibility and admiration, I'm honestly not sure which I would like to believe. Chica doesn't seem fazed for a moment, turning her head only for a second or two in curiosity without missing a step, but the whole thing gives me a really weird feeling.

Thankfully, the girl slowly moves out of my line of sight as we continue down the road, and then I have something else to think about. Pewter City is finally up ahead. I can see the guard house that marks the entrance now, a plain white building stretching all the way across the path, from one bank of trees to the next, so that the city is completely hidden from sight behind it.

Dusk is just starting to fall, and with it the temperature. I shiver. The rain stopped long ago, but my clothes are still a bit damp. I can't wait to get to the Pokémon Center to change into something warm and dry.

That's honestly the one and only thought on my mind as we walk through the guardhouse. I don't even notice what it looks like, keeping my eyes trained on the opposite door. I'm hoping that the Pokémon Center is somewhere close, but, even if it isn't, I know that I'll be able to pick it out easily from the small collection of ten or eleven buildings that makes up a typical "city" in this world. I step out onto the top stair of the guardhouse exit, and I freeze. The unexpected stop makes Chica bump into the back of my legs.

"Ka!" she protests, both from the collision and from the fact that Elliot and I are now blocking the exit.

"Elliot!" Without even thinking, I reach out and grab his arm. "Do you see that?"

"What? Where?" He looks around wildly.

"The streetlights! The houses! Look, they have power lines!" I gush.

Elliot turns to stare at me, wrenching his arm out of my grasp. "You're geeking out over power lines? Boy, are you strange."

"Don't you get it? It looks like a real town!"

And it does! The houses on the north side are organized into city blocks, with signs labeling the streets between. On the south side is an industrial sector, filled with buildings that look like factories and office buildings and...

"There's a hospital for people!" I squeal.

"Good, cause I think you need a hospital," Elliot says.

I turn on him. "Aren't you the least bit excited? Vermillion City didn't look like this!"

"No, it did not," he agrees. "That's kind of weird, but shouldn't we be focusing on finding the scientist we came here to talk to? And maybe a Pokémon Center? I don't know about you, but I'm still soaking."

"Ka!" Chica agrees, using the top of her head to push against my legs, urging me to move out of her way.

"Buzzkill," I mutter, but I follow him towards the city center, which seems to be the most likely place to find the Pokémon Center.

Freed from the blockage, Chica insists on going first from now on. With her leaf swinging proudly in time to a beat that only she can hear, she marches along the sidewalk. On the street to our right, people whiz past on bicycles, two or three at a time. Some look like kids out for a ride, but others are grown men in business suits with briefcases strapped down behind their seats or whole families riding in formation while their babies sitting in front of the handlebars in modified safety baskets.

"They have a City Hall," I say, pointing to the large Ancient Greek style building as Chica marches past like she owns the place.

"That must be the Pokémon Center up there." Elliot points out a sign on a giant post that looks like something you'd find outside a fast food place back in our world. This one is shaped like a Pokeball and looks exactly like the decorations you'd find in a Pokémon Center lobby. It's so high up that we can see it even from our position a couple streets away.

We weave our way towards it and are soon rewarded with the sight of a familiar red-roofed building wedged between a gym on one side and a restaurant advertising an all-you-can-eat buffet on the other.

"Well, I guess they know what trainers want," Elliot comments.

We step through the automatic glass doors and find that the interior, at least, looks exactly the way we would expect it to.

"Let's get our rooms and meet back here in ten minutes," I suggest. "If we hurry, maybe we can make it to the museum before it closes."

* * *

We're standing inside the first floor of the museum now, making our way up to the long counter on the right that seems to cover everything from ticket sales to general information. The rest of the floor is covered with fossils and glass-covered exhibits, spread out over one big open area, which makes it clear that this counter is the only place to go for help.

From the outside, we could see that the building stretches out beyond what we now see in front of us. There's a smaller wing that branches off from the museum, which I assume is where the scientists have their offices and laboratories. That's where we'll want to go, but the set-up makes it clear that visitors aren't allowed back there without an invitation.

Chica walks up to the counter and stretches up on her back legs, trying to see over it. With her front paws resting against the side, her head just barely pokes over the top.

"Excuse me," I say to the young man behind the counter, "we were wondering if you could help us."

The man is in his early 20's, wearing a white lab coat. He looks up from the computer he was typing into.

"50 dollars for a child's ticket, 70 dollars for adults," he says in a bored tone. "Read the sign."

"No, we didn't come to see the museum," Elliot corrects. "You see, my Eevee was recently exposed to a moon stone accidentally, and I was wondering if there was any way that the evolution could be stopped before she turns into an Umbreon."

"Nurse Joy told us that you might know something about the process of evolution," I add. "Especially involving evolutionary stones?"

The man stares at us blankly. "Um, I'm really just here to work the desk."

"But you are a scientist, right?" Elliot asks. "Can you at least examine her?"

He pulls open his drawstring bag and Maria jumps out onto the counter.

"I'm sorry," the man says, "I really don't..."

"What seems to be the trouble here?" a second man asks, stepping out of a doorway in the back. Without waiting for a response, he walks up to the counter and takes a close look at Maria.

"This Eevee appears to be in the early stages of transformation," he remarks as though he's just made an interesting observation.

"Yes!" Elliot says. "That's the problem."

"Really. That is absolutely fascinating. I'm Dr. Clark," he says, extending his hand.

"Elliot," Elliot replies, shaking his hand.

"And your friend is...?"

"Nobody important," I say dismissively.

"What's your Eevee's name?" Dr. Clark asks.

"Maria."

"Do you mind if I examine her?"

"Please."

The young man in the lab coat steps aside, and Dr. Clark bends down so that his head is on the same level as Maria. Maria turns her head to look at him.

"Yes, stay right there," he instructs her. He looks deep into her eyes for a moment. Then he runs his hand across the fur at the top of her head, over the large poofs of fur around her neck, and down one of her front legs.

"Say Eevee."

"Eevee," Maria says. This reminds me of the checkups I used to get as a kid where the doctor asks you to say "Ah," but Dr. Clark doesn't even glance into Maria's mouth. I can't see him doing anything, but he gives a slow nod.

"Dale, would you turn the lights off for a moment, please?" he asks the man in the lab coat.

Dale walks over a few steps a flips a switch. The lights in our portion of the room shut off, and, in the sudden darkness, patterns jump out of Maria's fur.

"Note the formation of the rings here on the forehead and the legs," Dr. Clark says, pointing to the light brown circles, "And the bands around the ears and tail."

Dale flips the lights back on.

"When the transformation is complete, those areas will change to a yellow color that will be visible by daylight, and at night they will glow," Dr. Clark continues. "But at the moment they are very faint. Was she exposed to a moonstone recently?"

"Yes. Just yesterday," Elliot answers.

"And how long was the exposure?"

"I don't know," Elliot admits. "We were traveling through Mt. Moon, and she got away from me for a few minutes. That must have been when it happened."

"I see," Dr. Clark says. "Well, based on the amount of time that has passed and the progression of changes, I would guess that it wasn't a very long exposure. She may not have even come into direct contact with the moon stone, although I can't be certain. Now, you said that the transformation itself is the problem?"

"It was all an accident," Elliot says. "We thought that you could only get an Umbreon through raising friendship levels and-"

I kick Elliot in the shin to make him stop talking. Dr. Clark gives Elliot a strange look.

"Look, the reason we came is to find out if there's any way to stop the evolution," I jump in. "Can we reverse it with an Everstone? Or at least stop it where it is? Maybe there's something else we could do? I really don't understand how evolution works, scientifically speaking, so if there's anything you could do...?"

Dr. Clark nods. "Why don't you step into my office?"

He flips up a section of the counter that seems to serve as a gate and beckons us through, but I feel uneasy. I could swear that the way he's looking at us has changed somehow. Ever since Elliot let slip about the way the Umbreon evolution works in the Pokémon games. Does he suspect something? Dale locks the counter back into place behind us, and, for a second, I wonder who Dr. Clark is really more interested in examining further-Maria or us.


	21. The Point of No Return

Dr. Clark is rummaging through an overflowing bookshelf, pulling out volume after volume and placing them on a swiftly growing pile on his desk. He’s also muttering to himself, but from where Elliot, Chica, and I are standing, we can’t make it out.

There are no chairs in the office except for the one behind the desk, which is covered in a thick stack of papers, and since the rest of the space seems overcrowded as it is, there is no obvious place for us to stand. We’ve been lingering in the doorway for the past five minutes, and I’m starting to wonder if Dr. Clark has forgotten us completely.

“So, Dr. Clark,” I say, fishing around for something that will call his attention back to us, “what type of scientist are you?”

“Ah! Here it is! Oak’s Encyclopedia!” he says triumphantly, thumping the back of his hand against a plain brown book. “First edition.”

He sweeps the pile of books he’s created back into an open space on the shelf and takes a seat on the now-available desk corner.

“I’m sorry, were you saying something?” he asks, crossing his legs with the picture of ease.

I clear my throat awkwardly. “I, um, was just asking what type of scientist you are. I'm assuming biologist?”

“Zoologist,” he corrects.

“Specializing in Pokémon?” Elliot asks.

“That is what zoology means,” Dr. Clark chuckles. “But now, back to this Eevee of yours.”

He flips open the book, runs his finger down the table of contents, and finally sets about locating the desired section by lifting the pages together and letting them fall one by one in quick succession. It reminds me of those little flip books with the moving pictures in the corner.

“Here we are,” he says, finally stopping on a page that contains a large photograph of an Eevee. He lays the book flat in his left hand and uses his right to point out a paragraph. His finger runs beneath the words as he reads out loud, “Its genetic code is irregular. It may mutate if exposed to radiation from element stones.”

“Radiation?” Elliot repeats.

“Yes,” Dr. Clark replies slowly. He continues as if speaking to a child. “You see, the evolutionary stones are what we in the scientific community call ‘radioactive.’ That means that they—“

“Yes, I know what radioactive means,” Elliot interrupts.

“Do you really,” Dr. Clark says quietly, as if speaking to himself.

“What Elliot means to say is that we didn’t know that evolution was a form of genetic mutation,” I jump in.

“Most evolutions aren’t,” he replies. “Normal evolutions are a natural part of the growth process for a species. It is only the more specialized evolutions that can be classified this way.”

Mercifully, he turns away from Elliot, but now he’s giving me that same look. It makes me feel like some kind of specimen in a petri dish. Have I said something I shouldn’t have? Do normal people from the Pokémon world really not know what radioactivity and genetic mutations are?

“So what does this mean for Maria?” Elliot asks, drawing all eyes back to the little Eevee in his arms.

“Once the mutation has begun, there is no way to reverse it,” Dr. Clark informs us. “The exposure to the moon stone has altered her genetic structure in a very specific way, and there is no known substance that can restore the original makeup.”

Maria’s ears droop. I can see the water pooling up in her huge brown eyes as though she’s about to start crying.

“However,” Dr. Clark cuts in, “the genetic structure formed by the moon stone exposure need not be permanent. To my knowledge, it has never before been tested, but, in theory, if Maria were to be exposed to the radiation from a second evolutionary stone, such as a thunder stone or a water stone, her genetic structure would make a second alteration.”

“So you’re saying that Maria has to evolve into something, but that something doesn’t have to be an Umbreon?” I ask. “Like if we exposed her to a water stone she would become a Vaporeon instead?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“Veeee!” Maria shouts happily. She wiggles back and forth in Elliot’s arms as though she can’t contain her joy.

Elliot laughs.

“There is one condition.” Dr. Clark holds up a hand to indicate that the celebration may be premature. “The second exposure must occur before the transformation reaches… well, in plain terms we’ll refer to it as ‘the point of no return’, shall we? If Maria reaches this ‘point of no return’ before she is exposed to a second evolutionary stone, she will become an Umbreon.”

* * *

“He has no idea how long it will take? No idea?” Elliot rages.

“Elliot!” I turn around, stealing a glance at the museum behind us to make sure no one heard that. The lights are slowly flickering off as it prepares to close for the night.

“What?” Elliot asks. “I have a right to be upset. The nearest place where we can find evolutionary stones is Celadon City, which will take us at least a week to get to, and Mr. Big Fancy Zoologist can’t even tell us if it’s possible to get there before Maria hits this ‘point of no return!’”

“Elliot, relax. Dr. Clark did tell us that we’ll be able to tell when she’s getting close. The closer she gets to being able to say “Umbreon” instead of “Eevee,” the closer she is, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Elliot grumbles.

He also said that the changes caused by mutation occur faster than those caused by normal growth, which means it will be faster than a normal evolution, but mentioning that won't help Elliot feel better.

“We’ll get to Celadon City in time,” I assure him, “but in the meantime, you really have to watch what you say around Dr. Clark.”

Beside me, Chica nods vigorously.

“What?” Elliot sounds completely lost.

“He knows something! Did you see the way he reacted to us? It was like he could tell that there was something different about us.”

“So what?”

“So what? Do you remember anything of what I told you when we first met? If anyone finds out that we’re not from this world, they’re not going to believe us. They’re going to toss us in the loony bin and throw away the key!”

Elliot raises his eyebrows. “I think you’re overreacting a bit.”

“Am I? You’ve seen how backwards this place can be. I got arrested on suspicion of stealing an Eevee when no Eevee had been stolen. They didn’t tell me why they were arresting me, they didn’t read me any rights, and if it hadn’t been for Chance, they would have thrown me in jail just for owning an Eevee. The people of this world are generally not very reasonable.”

“Ok, fine. Let’s say you’re right. Dr. Clark doesn’t have any proof. So maybe we seemed a little odd. That’s not a crime.”

“For now,” I say grimly.

“Look, it’s not as though we’re sticking around, anyway,” Elliot points out. “We’re both going to Celadon City, right?”

“Yeah, of course I’m coming to Celadon City with you. After this thing with Maria, it definitely wouldn’t be a bad idea to get Chance’s evolution sorted out as soon as possible.”

The Pokémon Center is finally up ahead. We step through the glass doors, and Elliot turns to head up the escalator.

“Um, you go ahead,” I say, coming to a stop in the middle of the lobby. “I want to make a phone call.”

“Ok. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Bright and early. If we’re going to take the fastest route to Celadon City, we’re going to need to do some shopping for supplies before we leave.”

Elliot nods in agreement and steps onto the escalator. Now that she is facing us, Maria smiles and winks from her position in the drawstring bag. Chica looks at Elliot and Maria and then back at me questioningly.

I lead her over to an open video phone in the corner of the lobby, pick up the receiver, and dial the number.

“I’m calling the warden of the Safari Zone,” I explain to Chica as I wait for him to pick up.

This doesn’t seem to answer her question, as she looks even more puzzled than before, but, just then, the warden’s face appears on the screen.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says. “I was wondering who’d be calling an old man like me at this time of night.”

“I’m sorry if it’s late,” I say, looking over at the nearest wall clock. It’s 7:30. “I was just wondering if you’d been able to sell my old house yet.”

“No, can’t say that I have,” the warden replies. “I’ve been keeping it safe for you in case you ever decided to come back.”

“Well, I know I said that you could do whatever you wanted with it, but I’ve changed my mind. You see, I've decided to move to Pewter City, and I could really use the money from the sale.”

“Alright, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, I’d love to chat, but I’ve got to check on the Pokémon before I turn in for the night.” The warden yawns.

I smile. “Good night.”

We both hang up, and I look down to see Chica staring at me accusingly.

“I am going to tell Elliot,” I protest, knowing exactly what she’s thinking. “But it doesn’t have to be right now. He’s got enough on his plate with worrying about Maria, and, besides, the old house isn’t even sold yet. It can wait until after we get to Celadon.”

Chica’s expression remains unchanged.

“I’ll talk to him as soon as we get Maria taken care of,” I insist. “I promise.”

Chica accepts this, although she still doesn’t seem happy.

“Elliot knows why I left Fuchsia City, and he knows why I’ve been travelling around. It won’t come as a surprise to him that I want to stop travelling and move to Pewter City now that he’s seen how much I love this place,” I tell Chica. “He’ll be totally fine with it.”

Chica looks up at me, and I sigh. She still doesn’t seem completely convinced. Well, to tell you the truth, neither am I.


	22. Preparations

"Why do I have to buy a new backpack?" Elliot whines.

"Have you seen that little red thing you call a bag? You couldn't fit five cans of Pokémon food in there! If we're going to make it to Celadon City the fast way, we'll need to carry a lot of supplies. Here, take a look at this one." I select a large forest green backpack that's advertised to carry up to fifty pounds of supplies and toss it to him.

Elliot catches it with a frown. "Ok, but why do I have to carry all the supplies? That yellow messenger bag of yours is bigger than my drawstring bag, but it's not even close to the size of this thing. You want me to carry all the big, heavy stuff?"

I look down at the familiar messenger bag hanging at my side. Elliot's right. It wasn't built to haul supplies for a trip like this one. I've already been carrying it around with a pot tied onto the strap because nothing more will fit inside. I guess I've just grown accustomed to this thing. It's been there since the beginning, the first moment I laid eyes on this crazy world.

But maybe Elliot feels the same way about his bag since it's one of the only things he has left from home.

"Ok," I sigh. "We'll both get new backpacks."

Elliot nods. "At least that's fair."

I slowly stroll down the aisle, examining the store's selection. Of course, it makes sense to look at the heavy duty ones made for hiking and camping, but I soon find myself wandering down aisles that look as though they won't have anything close to what I need.

"Can I help you?" It's the woman who was working the register when we came in, the only employee that I can see. Either she's impatient for another sale, or I really look lost.

"Um, yeah, I'm looking for a backpack I can use for a week-long hiking trip. Between my friend and I, we have to carry all the supplies we'll need for us and our Pokémon."

"Alright," she says, guiding me back to the aisle I started from. "If you're sure that you'd like to part with that beautiful messenger bag, you can see our selection here. I'm afraid that none of them have the sort of technology built into that one, though. May I ask why you want to replace it? I can also do repairs if it's been broken."

"What are you talking about?" I frown.

"That lovely yellow bag! Silph Co., isn't it?" The woman reads my expression, and her eyes widen. "You mean you don't know? Come up to the counter and I'll show you."

She walks rapidly to the front of the store and pats the counter where she would like me to place my bag. I set it down and she opens the top flap to reveal the inside pouch.

"Do you see this button?" she asks, pointing to a small "S" symbol at the back. "All you have to do is press it..." She demonstrates, lifting her finger and pushing directly in the middle of the symbol. Suddenly, everything inside the bag glows red, and, like a Pokémon returning to a pokéball, it disappears! "And everything inside is transferred to storage," the woman concludes. "You'll notice that the bag is as light as a feather. It's the same principle that lets you store an Onix inside your pokéball without having any trouble lifting it."

I stare inside the bag, unable to believe it. "I always thought that was just a logo!"

She smiles. "Where did you get such a wonderful bag? They're very expensive."

I think back to that morning, when I woke up to find that it had magically appeared next to the bed. "You might say it was a gift."

I hear footsteps on the tile floor and turn to see Elliot approaching the counter with a new backpack in hand. I smile.

"Good news. You won't be needing that after all. But I can think of something that you do need."

* * *

Back in my room at the Pokémon Center, Elliot is modeling his brand new pokéball belt, standing in front of a mirror and turning left and right to see it from different angles.

"Wow," I say. "For once, you actually look like a real Pokémon trainer and not some fanboy wannabe."

He ignores my comment. "It looks kind of lame with only one pokéball in it, though, doesn't it?" he asks, indicating the one that Maria is currently resting inside. While it's strapped into the first slot on the belt, the five empty slots make the belt as a whole seem surprisingly bare.

I open my mouth to make a smart reply.

"Ring, ring, ring! Ring, ring, ring! Phone call! Phone call! Ring, ring, ring!"

I snatch up the receiver for the video phone beside the bed, and the Safari Zone warden appears on screen.

"Hello!" he says brightly. "I'm glad to see that you're still at the Pokémon Center. There are a few matters that we need to discuss."

"Oh, um, alright," I reply, furtively hoping that he won't say anything more until I clear Elliot out of the room.

Elliot is looking at the screen curiously, but he hasn't made any attempt to butt in on the conversation.

"Do you mind?" I ask him apologetically. "This could take a while."

"Oh, no problem," he says, moving towards the door. "I'm sure I can find something to do."

"Maybe you can go look for Chica," I suggest. "I told her to stay near the center of town, but she does like to wander."

Elliot shuts the door behind him, and I count off a second or two in my head before turning back to the video phone.

"So, warden, how can I help you?"

"Well, I talked to a realtor this morning about selling that house of yours. Turns out there's a bit of paperwork that needs to be done. If you help me out with the details, we can get most of it out of the way right now."

Great. Paperwork. I heave a sigh and pull up a chair. This could take a while.

* * *

"Where could Elliot have gotten off to?" I ask Serendipity as she places the last of our new supplies inside my messenger bag.

"See-ee," she shrugs. She presses the button to transfer the items into storage.

It's been fifteen minutes since my call with the warden ended, and there's been no sign of him or of Chica. I do wonder what's keeping them, but...

I turn back to Serendipity and examine her carefully. I've gotten so used to the fact that she's making the slow transformation from Chansey into Blissey that I haven't realized how far into the evolution she is. She's definitely a brighter shade of pink now. Her hair extensions have shortened and lost the difference in coloring they once had at the tips. To add to that, the bottom half of her body, which is now perfectly white, is beginning to reveal a tiny bit of fringe that will clearly become the set of growths that look a bit like a skirt around the waist of a fully grown Blissey. She's clearly not a Blissey yet, but she doesn't seem to be a Chansey anymore, either.

"Can you say 'Chansey' for me?" I ask her, remembering what Dr. Clark told us about evolution earlier.

She gives me a strange look, as though I've just asked a college graduate what 1 + 1 equals, but she has the good nature to answer me anyway.

"See," she says easily. She stops, frowning like she can't understand what just happened.

"Chissey," she tries again, still frowning. Finally, she holds out her tiny arms as though she's steadying herself and takes a deep breath.

"Ch-aaansey," she finally manages.

"It's ok, Serendipity," I reassure her. "According to Dr. Clark, the change in your voice is a totally normal part of evolution. It just means you're getting closer to being a Blissey. I was just curious to see how it works because with Maria—"

The door bangs open to reveal Elliot, who's somehow managed to become completely soaked from head to toe. His shoes squelch as he steps into the room, dripping water all over the carpet. Chica marches in after him, smiling like she's just seen the funniest thing in the world.

"Did you pack my clothes already?" Elliot asks.

"Yeah, I've packed everything except the medicines," I reply. I pull out the controller that the lady at the bag store sold me earlier and drag my finger over the screen to scroll through the pictures of the items inside my messenger bag's storage. Quickly locating a set of dry clothes for Elliot, I tap the screen and open the bag to reveal that they've rematerialized.

"What were you doing?" I demand as I toss the clothes to him.

"You are looking," he announces, "at the proud owner of a brand new Magikarp!"

He pulls a Pokéball out of the second slot of his belt and holds it up high like it's some kind of trophy instead of a lame red fish that can't really do anything.

"Let me guess... you fell in the water again."

"Only twice." He smiles broadly.

"And you do realize that's a Magikarp, right?"

"Yes, but I shall train this Magikarp! And it will be the greatest Magikarp in all the land!" he proclaims grandly.

He responds to my stare with a smile. "No, seriously, though. I'm going to evolve it into a Gyrados."

"Oh. Well that's ok, then," I approve.

"Chika-ah!" Chica says, jabbing the tip of her leaf in the direction of the alarm clock on the bedside table.

"Right, we should probably get going," I agree. "I've never been in these woods before, so it might take a lot of walking before we find a place where we can set up camp for the night."

"And you're sure this will be faster than taking the roads?" Elliot asks.

I nod. "It's a straight shot from point A to point B. As long as we don't get eaten by wild Ursaring, we'll get to Celadon City two days quicker."

"Are there a lot of Ursaring in these woods?" Elliot asks, sounding worried.

"Nah. Probably just one or two. Probably."


	23. Into the Woods

“Everybody ready?” I ask.

Elliot, Chica, Maria, and Chance nod together. We’re in the Pokémon Center lobby, just about to step out the door and begin our journey to Celadon.

“Alright,” I say. “No time to lose.”

I step forward, but just as I reach the range of the sensors that operate the automatic doors, they slide open for someone else.

“Dr. Clark! What a surprise!” I say nervously.

It is the zoologist, looking a little disheveled with his white lab coat crooked and his hair windswept. It would be easy to believe that he’s completely lost, except for the fact that his eyes brighten when he catches sight of us.

“Ah, Elliot!” he says, “just the man I was looking for.”

Elliot doesn’t say anything in reply, but he’s got a look on his face like “who, me?”

“Sorry, Dr. Clark, but we're in a bit of a hurry,” I say, inching my way towards the door.

“No matter, no matter. This will only take a second.” He reaches into his right lab coat pocket and frowns when he finds that it’s empty. He reaches into the left one with the same result. He reaches into both pants pockets before finally locating the desired object tucked away in his shirt pocket.

He smiles as he produces a small electronic device that flips open to reveal a small screen and a number pad.

“I call it a cellular phone,” he announces proudly. “I invented it myself based on Pokégear technology from Johto.”

“Wait, you invented the cell phone?” Elliot asks in disbelief.

Ugh! I could almost punch him in the face! Did I not tell him to watch what he said around Dr. Clark?

“I believe he called it a ‘cellular phone’,” I say, as if Elliot just made a simple mistake. I put on my best “I’m-so-stupid” face as I ask, “Please, Doctor, what does it do?”

“In basic terms, it’s a more simple model of the video phone. Just like when you hold a video phone receiver, you must put the device up to your ear and speak into it. You’ll hear the voice on the other end of the line, and they will hear you. Its advantage is its portability, which is precisely why I’m giving you this prototype. I would like to use this device to keep tabs on your Eevee’s progress. It really is a fascinating scientific study.”

“You want us to call you and let you know how Maria is doing?” Elliot asks.

“My office phone number is programmed in so that you can reach me if anything remarkable happens, but, otherwise, I think it would be best if I called you twice a day for a report.”

“Um, Dr. Clark, I’m really not sure—“ I begin to say.

“Yes, of course I know that it would be much simpler if I was to go with you, but I’m afraid that I might slow you down. You can figure out how to operate the device, can’t you?”

“Oh, yes, of course!” I assure him. Anything to stop him from coming along. “No problem. We’ll report back twice a day.”

“Excellent!” he says, rubbing his hands together. “I look forward to it.”

* * *

“So,” Elliot says as we walk through the woods, “what’s your favorite color?”

“What?” I give him a weird look. “You want to know my favorite color?”

“Hey, I’m just trying to get a conversation going here,” Elliot says defensively. “Last time I tried asking you questions about yourself you exploded faster than an Electrode. I figured ‘What’s your favorite color?’ would be nice and safe. Unless you really are a ninja and have a rule against answering personal questions on principle?”

“I am not a ninja,” I emphasize, trying to crush out Elliot’s sudden hopefulness.

“Not a ninja. Hm, ok. Who’s the one leading us now? Without a map?”

“We’re traveling in a straight line! All we have to do is keep going the right degree south-east.”

“Oh, I see,” Elliot nods sagely. “And you can tell which direction is south-east, how, exactly?”

This time I really give him a strange look. “Are you telling me that you can’t tell which way is south-east?”

Elliot throws a strange look right back at me. “Most people require a little thing called a ‘compass’. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

“Amateur stuff,” I snort.

“So what then?” Elliot asks curiously. “Do you use the sun? The stars? The moss on the trees?”

“Moss?” I repeat, wrinkling my nose. “What on earth does moss have to do with anything? And as for the sun and the stars…” I point overhead to the canopy of leaves that grows thicker and thicker as we leave the edge of the forest, “we don’t exactly have a clear view, do we?”

“So, what? You can just tell?”

“Uh, yeah,” I say, as though it should be obvious.

Elliot raises his hand to the side of his mouth and stage whispers to Maria, “I smell ninja!”

I just glare at him. “You don’t have to stick to questions about my favorite color, you know,” I say, going back to the original subject. “Just don’t ask me about the past.”

“The past before we met or the past before you came to this world?” Elliot asks.

“Before I came to this world,” I clarify.

“Oh, well that helps!” Elliot says cheerfully. “In that case, how did you and Chica first meet? You said that no one walked up and handed you a Pokémon, so how did you manage to catch her?”

I tell Elliot the story of how Chica wandered into my garden one day and everything that followed as we continue trekking through the forest. Chica keeps interrupting to make little side comments, and I keep pausing to peer into the trees around us. We haven’t seen a wild Pokémon yet, and it’s making me nervous. I’d been warned that traveling in these woods was unsafe without several strong Pokémon. There have been reports of attacks here in the past, resulting in injuries ranging from cuts and scrapes to broken bones. Not exactly a walk in the park.

And sure enough, just as I finish the story, a huge dark shape steps out from between two nearby oak trees.

“Pinnnn,” it says threateningly, gnashing together a pair of giant two foot long pincers on top of its head.

It steps forward into the light, revealing a rounded brown body with two squat legs and two long arms ending in hands that sport claws in place of fingers. Its eyes are narrowed into angry triangles, and ten long teeth quiver inside a mouth that takes up almost a third of its torso. Even creepier? Its mouth is sideways, vertical instead of horizontal so that those long rectangular teeth mash in from the left and the right instead of the top and the bottom.

Its name is Pinsir, a five foot tall bug whose big white pincers are said to be able to smash through even the thickest of logs. Imagine the kind of damage it could do to an arm or a leg.

I swallow heavily. As soon as it appeared, we stopped dead in our tracks, hoping to avoid startling it. I stare deep into those angry triangle eyes, and it stares back. Then its pupils move to the left, sizing up Elliot. Then back to me.

No one has made a single sound. I wonder if we should keep standing here until it wanders away or whether we should try backing away slowly, but the internal debate quickly becomes pointless. Because Pinsir, without any provocation whatsoever, has begun to charge.


	24. Wild Pokémon

A giant brown bug is racing towards me with lowered pincers. Two feet long and dripping with tree sap, those twin points are extended like lances. Due to Pinsir’s height, they’re aiming directly at my stomach, sharp enough to pierce me straight through.

“Get out of the way!” Elliot screams, and all of a sudden I’m tumbling to the ground with Elliot on top of me.

I cry out in pain as my hip bashes into a stone, tears obstructing my vision as I try to see where the Pinsir is. Elliot tackled me out of the way! But Pinsir is completely unaware, eyes locked on the ground as it lowers the pincers on top of its head still further, and now Elliot’s legs are in its way.

“Kaaaa!” A small green form launches itself over our bodies with a fearsome battle cry.

I furiously swipe the water from my eyes to bring Chica into focus just as she lands. Directly on top of those long white points. Her legs slip out from under her upon meeting the smooth, rounded surfaces, but before she can fall to the ground, Pinsir has leapt into the air, throwing his head back with a mighty jerk that sends Chica hurtling towards the ground head first.

“Chica!” I shout as I wrench my legs out from under Elliot’s chest. I scramble to my feet, my right hand reaching instinctively towards my belt for Chica’s Pokéball. If she should land directly on her head…

But even as quickly as she’s falling, Chica manages to extend that bright green leaf, using it to execute a perfect flip. Four tiny legs buckle from the pressure of the landing. Her chest hits the ground with an audible slap, knocking the wind out of her.

Pinsir turns to face her, and I hastily return Chica’s pokéball to my belt, reaching instead for Serendipity’s in the third slot.

But Elliot is way ahead of me. “Maria, use Tackle!” he commands, sending the little Eevee running to Chica’s aid.

“Don’t get caught in the pincers!” I shout anxiously. There’s no telling what level this wild Pokémon is, but if it’s strong enough to use Guillotine… I shudder as I recall the move description I read in a book of basic battle laws: “A vicious tearing attack with pincers. It grips prey until it is torn in half. In organized battle, when a Pokémon capable of using this move manages to grasp its opponent between its pincers, an automatic KO is called. Under no circumstances is the move to be completed, under heavy penalty of law.”

Battle laws exist to prevent these sorts of terrible tragedies in battles between organized trainers. Unfortunately, I doubt that wild Pokémon come with any such guarantee.

Still in the midst of her Tackle attack, Maria takes a running jump and slams her head into 

Pinsir’s lower back. Flinching from the pain, it turns its head wildly to identify the source. Meanwhile, Chica is breathing hard, doubled over with her head lowered almost sideways, but she climbs to her feet.

“Rrrrrrr,” she growls. Her eyes are narrowed with pain and anger, and Pinsir, seeing that its second opponent is one foot tall and fluffy, turns back to her.

“Watch out for the pincers!” I repeat, flinging the camo-colored Safari ball into the air.

“Tackle again, Maria!” Elliot encourages. “Keep wearing it down!”

Serendipity materializes from the red light energy and locks her eyes on the huge brown bug, but not before it takes another step towards Chica, placing them just inches apart. Opening its pincers wide, it thrusts them towards her.

Maria slams into the Pokémon’s back, but the momentum only helps propel it forward, pressing the pincers closer with a sudden jerk of increased speed.

From my position beyond the Pinsir’s back, I can’t even see Chica anymore.

“Doubleslap!” I shout to the freshly released Serendipity. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

But Pinsir is stumbling back now with a wordless howl of pain. Raising its thin arms, it rubs frantically at its face. Its foot hits a tree root and it stumbles, turning so that I can see the tears streaming from inflamed red eyes.

Chica steps forward, circling around so that she stands protectively between me and it.

“Rrrrr,” she growls again. Then, “Chika. Chikorita.”

Pinsir turns and runs back into the woods, still howling. It disappears behind a thick grove of trees, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“What did you do to it, Chica?” Elliot asks in amazement.

“Chi-ka,” Chica smiles proudly, swirling her leaf around in a manner reminiscent of a Wild West cowboy twirling his gun.

“It was a Poison Powder attack, wasn’t it?” I ask. “You got him right in the eyes with it.”

Chica’s smile widens.

“High five,” I say, extending my hand.

She slaps it with the flat surface of her leaf, looking incredibly proud of herself.

Maria runs to Elliot, and he bends down to scoop her up into his arms.

“You did such a good job, Maria!” he praises, stroking her long rabbit-like ears.

Serendipity, who didn’t really come out in time to do anything, just looks incredibly relieved. I thank her anyway and return her to her pokéball.

“Ok, that was a close one,” I say to Elliot. “From now on, we’ve got to be more prepared. I’m sure that’s not the only wild Pokémon in these woods.”

“Oh come on,” Elliot says dismissively, “we’ve totally got this.”

“Are you sure about that?” I ask.

“Of course I’m sure!”

“Good. Because there’s another one right behind you.”

“Bellsprout!” it proclaims, issuing its name from the mouth of its tulip-shaped head. Prancing over to us on two thin root-shaped feet, this yellow flower come to life sprouts a thin green vine from its torso and cracks it down like a whip.

Maria leaps out of the way and turns to face it angrily.

Here we go again.


	25. Measuring Up

“Oh, come on!” Elliot whines. “You have to catch this one, it’s a Pikachu!”

“One more tackle, Chance,” I encourage. “Who said I wanted a Pikachu?”

Chance nods wearily and runs forward, crashing into the little electric mouse just as it’s powering up for a Thunder Shock.

“Everybody wants a Pikachu!” Elliot insists. “It’s a Pikachu!”

Both Pokémon fall backwards. The wild Pikachu lies on the ground, moaning softly. It’s probably got bruises all over its body by now. Chance has only tackled it about six times. Speaking of Chance, he’s trembling from head to tail as the electricity it absorbed from the Pikachu runs through his body.

“Well, I don’t particularly want a Pikachu,” I tell Elliot. “I never really got what all the hype was about.”

Chance stops shaking and gets back to his feet. The Pikachu also gets to its feet, although very shakily. It takes one look at Chance and starts to limp away.

“You didn’t get what the hype was about?” Elliot repeats incredulously. “You have got to be kidding me! You’re saying that just to push my buttons, aren’t you?”

Now that the Pikachu has finally given up, Chance visibly relaxes, sinking down and spreading out his legs so that his belly is lying flat on the cool ground. I ignore Elliot’s question and pour some water into a bowl, which I then offer to a very thankful Chance.

“I really hope that’s the last of them,” I say. “We’ve been battling wild Pokémon all day!”

Chance takes a break from lapping up water to agree with me. “Ee-vee!”

Maria has long since tired out, as have Chica and Serendipity. Chica’s so worn out that she doesn’t even want to walk alongside us anymore. I put her back into her pokéball two hours ago.

“Maybe we should take a break,” Elliot suggests.

“Sounds good to me. I could really go for one of those veggie wraps I packed. What do you say, Chance, you hungry?”

“Vee!” Chance jumps to his feet excitedly.

I glance around for a spot to sit and finally settle on a large gray rock. This spot should be as good as any, although there isn’t much space between the trees.

“Ring, ring, ring! Ring, ring, ring! Phone call! Phone call! Ring, ring, ring!”

“He programmed that ring tone into his cell phone? Really? I’m starting to like this Dr. Clark less and less.”

Elliot presses his finger against his lips angrily before flipping open the phone.

“Hello? Hold on, I’m going to put you on video.” Elliot pulls the phone away from his ear and pushes the large button in the center.

I stand up reluctantly and walk into the view of the camera.

“Oh, you got it working!” Dr. Clark says, looking surprised. “How did you figure it out so quickly?”

Is this guy serious? The button was marked “video”!

“Oh, um, I was playing around with it this afternoon,” Elliot lies. “Quite a… fancy contraption you’ve invented!”

Fancy contraption? What is this, 1902?

“So, how’s our little Eevee doing?”

“A little tired,” Elliot replies.

“If we keep battling wild Pokémon at this rate, we’ll never get to Celadon City,” I say.

“Ah,” Dr. Clark says awkwardly.

I watch the tiny screen, waiting for him to say something else. Nothing happens for a long moment, and I start to wonder if the screen is frozen. But then he blinks, and I realize he’s waiting for us to say something first.

“So, um, do you want to look at Maria or what?” I ask finally.

“Yes!” he says. “Yes, that would be good.”

Elliot swivels the phone around and squats down to Maria’s level.

“Vee?” Chance wanders over curiously, tilting his head as he looks into the screen.

“Maria is the one on the right, correct?” Dr. Clark’s voice projects from the phone, although I can no longer see him from my angle.

“Vee,” Maria nods.

“And the one on the left is…?”

“That would be my Eevee,” I respond. “Maria and Chance are brother and sister.”

“Born at the same time, then?”

“Yes,” I say slowly.

“Elliot,” Dr. Clark says, “have you noticed that Maria is significantly taller than her brother?”

“What?” Elliot completely forgets about holding the camera in place as he hastily examines the two Pokémon in front of him.

Maria and Chance have turned to look at each other face to face, as though they hadn’t noticed either until this very moment. It’s true; Chance’s head is tilted upwards as he looks at her. By my estimation, Maria is now three or four inches taller than him.

“According to my copy of Oak’s encyclopedia,” Dr. Clark continues, apparently oblivious to the fact that the screen is now pointed at a patch of dirt, “the average height for an Umbreon is three foot three inches, over two feet taller than the average Eevee. It would appear that much of the transformation can be measured in simple terms of physical height. Fascinat—Hey! Why am I pointed at the ground?”

“Oops, sorry, Dr. Clark.” Elliot raises the camera back into position.

“Quite all right. I’m sure the technology takes a bit of getting used to.”

Knowing he can’t see me, I roll my eyes.

“Any chance you packed a measuring tape?” Elliot asks me.

“You know what? I actually did.” I pull the little remote out of my pocket and scroll through the listings.

Even though he asked, Elliot looks surprised.

“Hey, I thought some tools might come in handy,” I say defensively. “And it’s not like they weigh anything when they’re in storage. Here we are.”

I scroll past the hammer and the Swiss army knife and tap on the little picture of the measuring tape. I can feel it materializing in the pocket of my messenger bag because of the sudden weight. I pull it out and kneel down on one knee to take the measurements.

“Hold still,” I tell Chance and Maria, although it’s probably unnecessary since they already are.

“11 inches,” I report after measuring Chance. “I assume it goes from the foot to the tip of the ear?”

From the camera phone, I hear the rustling of pages. “I’m afraid it doesn’t say. Very unhelpful. It’s a flaw I’ve noticed in several of these encyclopedia entries. Dragonair, for example—“

“And Maria is 15 inches,” I interrupt.

“That leaves another twenty four inches, assuming that our measurement techniques correspond to those in this encyclopedia,” Dr. Clark concludes. “However, when I examined her yesterday, I noted that she was about 12 inches. Maria has grown about three inches in one day.”

“So we have about eight more days?” Elliot asks. “We can do that!”

“Assuming the growth remains constant, yes, you have eight days until she reaches the full height of an Umbreon. However, if you wish to estimate the time it will take for her to reach what we are referring to as the ‘point of no return’… Having no prior observational evidence, I cannot say for sure, but the halfway point would seem to be more accurate.”

“So you’re saying four more days,” I say gravely.

“Due to the lack of proper scientific evidence, I cannot say,” Dr. Clark repeats, “but it would appear to be a good working hypothesis.”

“How far have we gotten?” Elliot asks me. From the look on his face, I know that he has a guess of the answer.

“After all these battles? Maybe about a sixth of the way.”

Neither one of us says what we’re thinking: at this rate, we’re never going to make it.


	26. Thieves

“Elliot, come on, we have to stop sometime,” I urge.

He turns briefly to scowl at me before stubbornly pushing ahead.

It’s been over a day since that call with Dr. Clark, and other than the brief stops for our two daily phone calls to him, we’ve been walking nonstop. The sun set hours ago, and it’s gotten so dark that I’m following Elliot more by sound than by sight. It’s a good thing he makes so much noise pushing through the undergrowth, or I would have lost him by now.

Maria is the only one of our Pokémon who’s still out; for some reason she refuses to return to her Pokéball. She's been absolutely insistent on this, even though we’ve only seen one wild Pokémon all day: a little Pidgey that flew away apparently scared to death after Maria screamed a long and unintelligible string of syllables at it.

Yes, she’s in an even worse mood than Elliot, if that’s even possible. All day long she’s been experiencing growth pains in her legs, and she seems to be constantly starving. Getting upwards of three inches taller every day apparently does that to a Pokémon.

Maybe she wouldn’t mind if she liked what she was turning into, but clearly she does not. When night fell and the little rings appeared on her fur, I could practically taste her mood becoming even more sour.

For his part, Elliot hasn’t been talking to me. I know, you’d think I’d be thrilled for a little peace and quiet. I certainly would have appreciated some of this when we were travelling through Mt. Moon and I couldn’t get him to shut up, but now I would prefer the chatter if it meant that he would be happier.

Instead, we’ve been walking along without even looking at each other, occasionally munching on trail mix to make up for the lack of meals and listening as the chirps of Pidgeys and Pidgeottos changed into the soft hooting of the owl-like Hoothoots and Noctowls.

“Elliot, if we don’t get some sleep, we’re eventually going to just fall over. We're going on forty hours without sleep here. Let's rest for a while. Just a few hours. We don’t even have to set up a tent; I’ll just roll out a couple sleeping bags and we can stop right here.”

“And what if we don’t make it in time?” Elliot demands, finally turning around. “What is Maria going to do if she gets stuck hating her own body for the rest of her life?”

“We’re back on schedule now,” I argue. “We’ve made up the distance that we needed, and then some.”

“But Dr. Clark said it’s getting faster now. She might reach the point of no return by the end of tomorrow!”

“Look, I know where we are right now, and I know how fast we can walk. Even if we stop for a few hours, we’ll get to Celadon City by two or three in the afternoon tomorrow.”

“And how do I know you’re not lying to me?” Elliot demands suddenly. “I’m just supposed to take your word for it, just supposed to trust you? How can I trust you when you barely tell me anything?”

The words hurt worse than a slap in the face. Worse than I would have thought possible. Worse, I realize, than if they would have been said by anybody else.

Swallowing hard, I choose my next words very carefully.

“Elliot, listen to you. You’re not yourself.”

Elliot blinks three times, hard. The anger in his face fades into the surprise that accompanies a sudden realization.

“You’re right,” he says, as though he can’t believe he didn’t see it. “What is wrong with me?”

“You need some sleep,” I say, in a tone of voice that’s quietly begging him to listen to me.

Elliot nods slowly, looking vaguely troubled, as though he’s just caught sight of something he doesn’t like. “You—You might be right.”

Now that his eyes have relaxed out of their angry glare, they give him the appearance of someone who’s very tired: weak and drawn, as though he’s having trouble keeping them open.

I pull a rolled up sleeping bag out of my messenger bag (I’ve had it on that setting for the past hour), and toss it to him.

“Here. I’ll let out Serendipity so she can keep watch.”

It’s a calculated choice, sending out Serendipity instead of Chica or Chance. She seems to have a special way of soothing and comforting that may do Maria quite a bit of good. Since Maria has been nodding off and on in Elliot’s drawstring bag all day, she and Serendipity might prefer to stay up and talk.

Sure enough, as soon as Serendipity materializes, she walks over to where Maria is standing at the end of Elliot’s now rolled out sleeping bag and wraps her up into a hug.

“Eevee,” Maria says sadly.

Although I can’t understand Serendipity’s response, it makes me smile to hear her gentle tone. I climb into my own sleeping bag a couple feet away from Elliot, who’s already fast asleep.

* * *

And that’s the last thing I remember until the break of dawn sends me a rude awakening.

“See!” I hear Serendipity protest angrily over a sort of rapid shuffling sound.

My eyes shoot open to find a small group of lithe black Pokémon darting back and forth and all around our little makeshift campsite. Moving so quickly that I can’t even tell how many there are, they’re knocking things over, snapping off low hanging tree branches, poking at Maria and Serendipity with their large white claws, and generally wreaking havoc.

But that’s not why Serendipity cried out. While a pair of the troublemakers circle around and around to prevent her from going anywhere, a particularly large one who seems to be their leader is rolling away the egg she must have recently laid!

I unzip my sleeping bag and scramble out, but when I take a step forward, the creature nearest me stops in its tracks and pulls back its lips to growl at me menacingly.

It’s a Sneasel. I can see that clearly now that it’s standing still. Standing on two legs, it’s almost a foot shorter than Serendipity, but it’s much thinner. Its longer legs also enable it to be much faster. Instead of toes, it has two white claws on the end of each foot, instead of hands, larger claws. Its most distinctive features are its tail and its left ear, both of which resemble long red feathers (the tail being a collection of three, while the ear is obviously just one).

“Let them go,” I advise Serendipity and Maria. “I've heard that Sneasel can be downright vicious when they don’t get their way.”

Serendipity looks like she’d like to give one of them a good slap, but she takes my advice, folding her arms across her chest instead.

Smiling wickedly, the one who growled at me zips off to join the leader. Standing side by side, they hoist the egg between them and use their claws to climb up a nearby tree. They move rather quickly for carrying a heavy weight and only having one available arm apiece.

“Well, there goes our breakfast,” Elliot says.

I look down in surprise. I hadn’t even realized he was awake, but there he is, lounging on top of his sleeping bag as though he’s been watching the whole time.

“That should keep them busy for a while. Just in case, though, it might be best if we got moving again soon. Oof.” Elliot groans as he sits up and begins to stretch.

I watch quietly, noting that he seems to be in a better mood than he was yesterday.

“Man, I’m sore all over,” he complains lightly. “How much walking did I make us do? You should have stopped me sooner!”

His lips curl into a little crooked smile, and I know that this is his way of apologizing for acting like a jerk.

“Oh, sure, now you think so,” I tease. “When will you learn that I am always right?”

We must’ve only been asleep for about four hours, but Elliot’s not the only one who’s feeling much better. I’m starting to feel a little optimistic about our chances of arriving in Celadon City by lunchtime, and Maria almost manages a smile as I pour out a can of Pokémon food for her to eat.

Oddly enough, it’s the usually-happy Serendipity who seems worried about something. There's a frown on her face as she looks off into the forest ahead. Is it just because of the egg, or does she know something we don’t?


	27. Bzzzz

“Hey, Maria, say ‘Eevee’ for me,” Elliot requests, tilting his head towards the Pokémon riding in his backpack.

Over the past couple of days, Maria has gotten to look more and more like an Umbreon and less and less like an Eevee. Most of the change has been in terms of growth, just as Dr. Clark said it would be. She’s almost two feet tall now, twice as big as Chance, and as she’s grown, her legs have become long and lithe, her torso has gotten thinner, and her head has become smaller compared to the rest of her body.

Starting today, her fur has also begun to change. The large white tufts around her neck are getting progressively thinner; she’s shedding worse than a cat in springtime. I have a feeling that she’ll begin shedding all over her body soon, and all that brown fur that’s lost will be replaced by dark black.

Anyone could see that she’s nearing the point of no return, but this test is the only way to know how close she is.

“Eevee,” Maria answers easily.

Elliot, Chica, and I all breathe a collective sigh of relief. As long as she can say her name so smoothly, we’ve got time.

“How much longer?” Elliot asks anxiously.

“Two, maybe three hours tops,” I say. “Assuming we continue in more or less a straight line at more or less the same pace.”

“And Dr. Clark estimates the point of no return for five hours from now,” Elliot recalls. “Well, that’s good! We’re going to make it.”

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” I caution.

“What could go wrong? We haven’t run into any wild Pokémon since the first day, not counting that pack of Sneasel.”

“Exactly. Elliot, doesn’t it occur to you that maybe it’s been a little too quiet? With the way Serendipity looked this morning, I can’t help thinking that there’s something going on here that we don’t know about. Something—“

“Look out!”

I whip my head back just in time to avoid a flash of black and yellow that whizzes by just inches from my face. A buzzing sound about as quiet as a power saw just zoomed towards my ear, and the resulting flinch is probably the only thing that saved me from getting my nose pierced by a humongous stinger.

The offending creature makes a whirling turn in midair and slows to a stop in front of us. The description on this one is easy. It’s a giant wasp. The end. Giant wasp with two extra stingers for hands.

Now, you’ve probably seen a few giant wasps in your life, right? Here you are having a nice picnic and, all of a sudden, there it is, trying to cram itself into your soda can. So big it can barely fit through the opening, now that’s a big wasp.

That is nothing. when I say, “giant wasp”, I mean three feet tall with wings like picture windows and stingers that could take on a second job as drill heads. This is a Beedrill.

“Li-ur-deeb,” it shouts out over the buzzing of its wings. “Lir-deeb!”

“What is it saying?” I ask in disbelief.

If it had said, “Beedrill,” that I could have believed. If it had simply said “Bee” or “drill” that would have been just fine. But I have never heard a Pokémon mangle its own name that badly before.

“A-tee-roh… A-tee-roh-ki-chuh!” Chica spits out.

And now I’ve heard everything.

“Chica, what is going on here?” I demand.

“Ka!” Chica shoots her leaf up into the air like a hand directing me to stop.

Elliot looks from Chica to the Beedrill hovering at a level just above her head.

“Chica, I know it’s a bug, but you can totally take it,” he encourages. “Let’s just—“

“Chi. Ka. Ri. TAH!” Chica whips her head around furiously and swoops her leaf down to hug the side of her face in one swift motion. It’s just long enough that when it stops, the little sideways green tip rests gently over her mouth, reminiscent of a single finger saying, “Shhh!”

“Elliot, I think she’s telling you to shut up,” I think, but I keep quiet because having Chica turn around to shush me would ruin the effect.

Apparently satisfied, Chica turns and launches a question, to which the Beedrill responds with a long monologue. The words are all the same, but the tone goes up and down so as to resemble the sound of a normal conversation.

For Elliot and I, it’s as though they’re speaking Chinese, but something that’s said causes Maria to wriggle around in Elliot’s bag, demanding to be let down. As soon as her paws touch the ground, she rushes over to join the conversation with what sounds like an argument or a demand.

From that point on, it appears to grow quite heated, with all three Pokémon interrupting and talking on top of each other, until Maria finally flops her ears down in an angry pout and slinks back to Elliot. Chica, for her part, merely sighs and waves the Beedrill back on its way.

As soon as the buzzing dies down, I ask Chica, “What was that about?”

Chica raises her leaf and jabs it twice to the right.

“You want us to go that way?”

Chica nods and begins to walk in the direction she indicated.

“What’s over there?” Elliot wonders as he lifts Maria and his bag back onto his shoulders.

The part of the forest Chica leads us to appears at first glance to be exactly like all the others. I don’t know why Chica is leading us this way, but I intend to keep following her until I find out.

After half an hour of nothing, though, we’re all beginning to get impatient.

“Um, Chica?” I ask. “I don’t see anything over here.”

Chica jabs her leaf forwards one more time.

“No, I still don’t see anything. Whatever was here, it must have moved somewhere else.”

Chica shakes her head.

“No, it hasn’t moved?”

My question receives no answer except a stare.

“I’m sorry, I just don’t understand. Can’t this wait for some other time? We’re getting really off course, here. It’s time we turned back.”

I turn back to the left to correct our course, but before I can step forward, I find Chica standing directly in front of me, blocking my path.

“Chica, what’s the matter? If we don’t get back on course we won’t make it to Celadon City in time. You know how important that is.”

Chica stares up at me defiantly. I try to step around her. She sidesteps to block me again.

“What is wrong with you, Chica?” Elliot demands angrily.

She throws him a glare, her upper lip trembling as though she’s just barely suppressing a growl.

“Ok, fine,” Elliot says. “You two can stay here arguing all you want. Maria and I are going on to Celadon.”

He takes a long stride forward only to find Chica rushing up to block his path. I take a few steps towards them and she switches back to blocking me. Then Elliot steps forward, and this time she really does let loose a growl.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Elliot says. “Why don’t you just return her to her Pokéball?”

At that, Chica turns away from me and makes a wide U-turn, smacking headfirst into Elliot’s knees. He stumbles backwards.

“She just tackled me!” he protests.

“Hey, Chica!” I call out, raising my voice to a tone of reprimand. “You apologize to Elliot right this minute!”

I know that with that short of a run she can’t have built up enough speed to do any actual damage, but it was still very out of line.

Chica looks at the ground and mutters something under her breath.

“Look, Chica, I know you’re only trying to do what you believe is best, but we don’t have any other choices here. Whatever it is that Beedrill told you, we’re going to have to turn back now.”

Suddenly, a thought crosses my mind.

“Are you trying to tell us there’s something dangerous up there?” I ask.

Her frown dissipates somewhat as she nods at me solemnly.

“Well,” I say, glad to have some sort of explanation at last. “That’s unfortunate, but I think I speak for Maria, Elliot, and myself when I say that we’re just going to have to take that risk.”

I nod to Elliot to go ahead while Chica stares daggers into the ground in front of my feet.

“Hey,” I say quietly, bending down to her level. “I know you’re just trying to protect us, but I promise it will be ok. Whatever’s ahead, we can get through it together.”

Finally raising her head, she nods to me once more and rushes off to take the lead position. Since she’s the only one of us who knows what’s coming and is in any condition to face it, it seems like a good idea to me, too.

And I turn out to be completely right. We’ve only been walking fifteen minutes when Chica comes to a sudden stop. Seeing her duck down into a bush, I follow suit, dragging Elliot down with me into a thick patch of tall grass. He looks at me curiously, but, thankfully he doesn’t say anything.

If he had, I might have missed the faint buzzing in the distance. It sounds exactly like the Beedrill we met earlier, and my ears tell me that it’s traveling in the same direction. They also tell me that it’s getting closer.

We crouch under the grass with bated breath as the buzzing grows louder and louder and louder until it seems to be right on top of us. And then the sound begins to slowly die away. Still, I wait for it to disappear completely before getting back to my feet.

Outside the patch of grass, Chica is waiting for us. She jerks her head to the side as if to say, “Go, hurry!” We obey, moving as quickly as possible away from the spot where the Beedrill passed. It’s not long before we hear the telltale buzz of another Beedrill somewhere behind us, undoubtedly traveling along the exact same path.

“It’s almost like some kind of patrol,” I whisper to Elliot. 

His eyebrows pull together as he asks, “What can they be guarding?”

I was just wondering the same thing. I try to assemble my thoughts into some kind of working theory, but they scramble out of my head an instant later. In the fraction of a second it takes me to blink my eyes, it’s moved from a spot way out in the distance to right there!

My panicked brain can’t even recognize what kind of Pokémon it is. Or recognize that it is a Pokémon at all. My first thought is monster. Big. Purple. Bristling spikes.

And then Chica slams down on top of it, and the whole scene freezes. Chica is standing atop a wriggling purple mountain of spikes, digging in with all four feet as the creature beneath struggles to get unpinned. Close enough to touch, it shakes its horned head at me and bellows with hatred in its eyes.

His eyes. It’s a Nidorino.

It’s only when Elliot yanks my arm back to make me step away that I realize I’ve been frozen to the spot with shock. This Pokémon gave no warning call, no battle cry. It didn’t stop to battle Chica. Replaying the scene in my head, I see that it actually jumped right over her to get to me.

Now seeing that we’ve reached a safe distance, Chica tumbles off the Nidorino’s back and readies a Razor Leaf attack. But instead of trying to ward off her attack or launch one of his own, the Nidorino ignores the threatening helicopter spin of Chica’s leaf and charges towards Elliot. Elliot, who represents no threat to him whatsoever.

Elliot takes a rolling dive, sending Maria tumbling out of his bag and rolling over and over until she lands in a heap with her belly in the air.

And then the Nidorino turns on me, and Chica has stopped her Razor Leaf attack to launch a much weaker Tackle just to keep him away.

I turn to see Elliot scrambling up a tree, and he calls for me to come up with him as he yanks out Maria’s Pokéball to return her. But she’s gotten back to her feet and she shakes her head wildly in something halfway between telling Elliot no and trying to eliminate the pain of landing on it.

I make a run for the trees and Maria makes a run for me, cutting off the Nidorino one more time as he slips past Chica. But Maria stumbles as if she’s somehow gone off-balance, and, instead of charging into the Nidorino she sprawls out on the ground in front of him, causing him to trip.

And now my leg is shot through with a burning pain that makes me shriek and collapse to the ground, desperately clutching at it as I feel the liquid blood flowing out of it in waves.

I hear Chica and Maria screaming out in uncontrolled rage, and when the next wave of pain passes, I realize that the Nidorino has gone silent.

Breathing hard, I try to pull myself together long enough to examine the gaping wound in the back of my left calf.

“Elliot, get the bandages,” I gasp as he leaps out of the tree and rushes to my side. “And find an antidote!”

“For Chica?” he asks in a tone of voice that suggests I’m going crazy for thinking about the tiny scratches on Chica’s belly when I’m over here bleeding.

“I meant for me,” I gasp, pointing to the streams of poison oozing out of the wound. “It got me with its horn, didn’t it?”

“But the antidote was made for Pokémon!” Elliot says desperately as he yanks the control for the messenger bag out of my pocket and slams on the setting to release all emergency medical supplies. “Will it even work on humans?”

“Just do it!”

I can already see the poison working its way up the veins in my leg, coloring them a nasty black. The poison must work faster on humans because it’s already way too far gone. If this antidote doesn’t work, I’m going to die.


	28. Elliot Does Not Make a Good Doctor

“Just… cut it off!” I gasp.

With shaking hands, Elliot takes the pair of medical scissors and snips off the leg of my pants at the knee, revealing the damage to my lower leg. I’m surprised to see that the wound itself is only about the size of a quarter. For such a small area, it’s causing me a blinding amount of pain. Even worse, it’s bleeding way too much, and a huge portion of the leg around it has begun to swell up.

“I should probably give you the antidote first, right?” Elliot asks anxiously. “And then try to stop the bleeding?”

“How should I know?” I demand. “Just… just do it!”

“Chikaaah!”

I whip my head around upon hearing the warning cry, just in time to see Chica take down a Pikachu with a ferocious storm of razor leaves.

“Should I inject this into your leg or your arm or where?” Elliot asks, holding up a needle filled with the antidote. “Well, I guess your heart has to pump it through your body anyway, and most doctors seem to use an arm… But how do I get it into the vein? I’ve never done this before!”

Still on high alert from Chica’s attack on the Pikachu, Maria turns to tackle a Pokémon advancing from the other side, and then, all of a sudden, they’re everywhere. Pidgeottos swooping down from the sky, Parasects scuttling out of holes in the ground, Exeggutors stomping down everything in their path as they charge towards, not Maria or Chica, but Elliot and I.

Chica begins to resemble a rotating sprinkler as she spins a rapid 360, discharging a steady stream of leaves in every direction as Maria rushes forward to deliver the final blows as needed before rushing back to power Chica up with Helping Hands.

Elliot ducks away from a Pidgeotto attempting to dive bomb his head, and reaches for the remaining pokéballs in my belt to call out Chance and Serendipity before we both get killed. Fortunately, I beat him to it, throwing out both pokéballs in one go. If Elliot had tried to call them out, the fingerprint detectors would have refused to let the balls come open.

Chance rushes off at once to join Maria in the heat of the battle, but Serendipity takes one look at the way Elliot is holding the needle and knocks it aside just as he attempts to jab it into my arm.

“Chi. See!” she scolds, and, all of a sudden, the egg in her pouch is glowing with a surge of yellow energy that floats out to form an egg shaped cloud of fairy dust.

“Softboiled!” Elliot says with surprise, naming the move.

The yellow energy descends upon the medical supplies like a swarm, and suddenly Serendipity is pointing and waving her arms like an oversized Togepi as they all fly into action. The needle injects itself neatly into my arm. The water is pouring itself into the wound to wash it clean. The bandages are coming unwrapped in long white streams.

Unfortunately, I’m still far from feeling better. All this dancing and whirling is starting to make me feel sick. I turn and vomit into the roots of the tree I’m sitting up against. By the time I turn back, Serendipity is directing the supplies back into my bag. I watch as they neatly pack themselves away, and then the glowing energy forms itself into a tiny little circle, presumably whatever is remaining, and floats into my chest. It moves right through as though I were made of nothing more than air, and all of a sudden I feel a bit of my strength returning.

Gasping with exhaustion, Serendipity turns tail and posts herself between me and the advancing Pokémon, the final line of defense.

And it’s only then that I turn to see Elliot crouching beside me. I must have only dimly recognized it, but this entire time he’s been holding my hand.

“How do you feel?” he asks. His face glows with compassion and concern.

“Not good,” I reply, in a tone of voice that suggests this should be obvious.

“Better though?” he asks, trying to restrain a smile.

“Hm, let’s see. My leg feels like it’s been set on fire, it’s swollen to about the size of a tree trunk, I’m not sure whether I can even stand up, we’re miles away from the nearest hospital, and we’re being attacked by an angry horde of Pokémon. Yeah, everything’s just peachy.”

“Well, that answers my question. If you have time for sarcasm, you must be feeling better!”

“Yeah, great. In case you haven’t noticed, our Pokémon are getting tired.”

I point out in the direction of what has turned into a never-ending battlefield. Chance and Maria are covered in cuts and scratches as they growl weakly at a temporarily stationary Pinsir. Chica is gasping as she shoots a stream of Poison Powder at a Pidgeotto she accidentally missed with her hurricane of razor leaves, and Serendipity was weakened by the Softboiled move before she even began.

“They can’t hold out like this much longer,” I warn grimly.


	29. It Just Gets Better and Better, Doesn't It?

Every step is painful. I’m leaning heavily on Elliot to offset the stabbing pain that shoots through my injured leg whenever I put weight on it, somehow managing to keep stumbling ahead. With one arm wrapped around Elliot’s shoulders and the other constantly fluttering in an attempt to keep my balance, the task has also fallen upon Elliot to keep birds and flying insects away from our heads as the army of wild Pokémon continues its assault.

Although they are very rapidly tiring, our Pokémon are still doing the best they can to keep us safe. As Elliot and I stumble slowly onward, they are stuck to us like glue on all sides: Chica ahead, Serendipity behind, and an Eevee on either side.

“Ah,” Elliot complains as an incoming Pidgeotto slices its beak into his upturned arm. He slaps it away reflexively, and the sudden backwards motion causes it to smash into a tree trunk. It crumples to the ground.

“I don’t know how much longer we can keep this up,” I gasp, nearly breathless from the pain and exertion.

Obviously nursing a broken wing, the Pidgeotto at the foot of the tree gets back up, and, in complete defiance of its inability to continue flying, begins to hop after us.

“Do they never give up?” Elliot demands as Serendipity slaps the injured Pidgeotto away. “Have all these Pokémon gone crazy?”

And then, to our complete astonishment, Chica responds to the question with a shake of her head.

“They’re not crazy?” I repeat in disbelief.

Chica shakes her head once more and points forward with her leaf.

“Chi- chika!”

I squint my eyes in the direction she’s pointed in, trying to see what could possibly be up there that could explain these Pokémon’s behavior. Did I really understand her correctly? Could the answer to this puzzle lie just beyond that line of trees?

And then, all of a sudden, the wild Pokémon are rushing forward as one, no longer attacking from all sides but instead turning to face us head on. They form a line that stretches along the line of trees for as far as I can see in either direction and at least five Pokémon thick at every point. It’s as if every single Pokémon in the forest has gathered to stand their ground at this one point.

And then I notice something.

As our little group comes to a halt, I draw in my breath.

“Elliot, do you see that?” I ask, sweeping my eyes along the rows of wild Pokémon assembled before us. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner! All those Pokémon, they’re all males!”

“What?” Elliot asks in surprise.

“Just look!” I point out with my right hand to each Pokémon as I mention them. “Three, four, five Nidorinos. Do you see a single Nidorina? Or a Nidoqueen? There’s a Nidoking. And a group of Volbeat without any Illumise. With the others it’s more subtle, but I can’t see a single indication of a female Pokémon anywhere.”

“In a group as big as this, the odds of that are…” Elliot begins.

“And most of them seem to be evolved forms!” I say, noticing another pattern. “To go back to the “Nido”s, you see Nidorino and Nidoking, but no Nidoran. We’ve seen countless Pidgeottos and a couple Pidgeots, but not a single Pidgey.”

The Pokémon assembled before us remain completely motionless, with expressions like carved stone. They’re guarding against our any sudden move, standing as protectors.

And then all the puzzle pieces fall into place.

“Elliot, it’s late spring!” I say triumphantly.

He treats me to a look that suggests the blood loss has gone to my head. “So?”

“It must be at the end of breeding season! There aren’t any females here because they’re hatching eggs and taking care of babies! And how much do you want to bet that all those baby Pokémon are right back there?”

“But then, why have they been attacking us? When all this started, we were still miles away! Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure that even Pokémon fathers trying to protect their babies don’t normally overreact to this level of insanity!”

Well, that’s a good point.

And then, echoing through the trees comes a wordless cry of pain, the type of cry that comes from hundreds of different species shouting out together to make a single note of intensified suffering.

The response is an audible snap as every single Pokémon within five miles turns their head to the source of the cry. And then in the blink of an eye the air is filled with the sound of their roars.

Every single Pokémon that stood before us has gone, and Elliot and I can only stand in stunned silence.

“Ka,” Chica says finally. Filled with determination, she points to the line of trees, through which, in the absence of its guards, we can finally see the signs of a large open clearing, perhaps even big enough to be considered a meadow.

“You want us to walk right towards the trouble?” Elliot asks.

In response, Chica simply begins to stride forward.

“Elliot, I don’t think we really have a choice,” I sigh.

I take a deep breath. And then I swing forward on my good leg, forcing Elliot to make his own way forward in his duty as my human crutch.

After the temporary rest, every step I take onto my injured leg seems like a tiny piece of torture, but I urge myself ahead by counting down the steps until we break through the last of the trees. 10, 9, 8…

The sudden burst of sunlight blinds me when we finally step out from under the trees. For just a second, I can’t see a single thing, and that one second is all it takes for everything to change.

A growl and a thunk, and suddenly I’m falling. Falling because my support has crumbled.

I cry out as my left leg hits the side of Elliot’s right tennis shoe, and I’m attacked by a swarm of guilt as I realize that I’ve landed directly on top of him. I roll off of his body as quickly as possible, only to find his arm pinned beneath my back. And the thing that scares me most is that it doesn’t make a single move to try to free itself.

“Elliot? Elliot!” My vision now returned to me, the first thing I see is his head lying on the ground, face up. His eyes are closed as if he’s sleeping.

“Elliot!” I repeat frantically, but I know now that he can’t hear me. He’s been knocked unconscious.

And the female Ursaring that must have hit him is looking very, very angry.

Chica, Serendipity, Chance, and Maria stand before her like a line of dominoes waiting to be knocked over by a single swipe of her enormous paws. She lets out a roar more fearsome than the meanest grizzly bear. Just an inch away from Chica’s neck, her claws quiver in anticipation of the strike.

“Gnir-as-ruh!” she roars.

Serendipity holds up her hands in a gesture of peace as she returns, “Ees-na-cha!”

“A-tee-roh-ki-chuh!” Chica says, and I recognize this as her exact response to the Beedrill we met earlier.

I don’t have a clue what it could mean, but each Pokémon is saying their name backwards, and it has to be a special signal of some kind.

Whatever it is, it seems acceptable to the female Ursaring. She gives Serendipity and Chica each a suspicious glare, but she’s drawn back her arm as if reconsidering her plan to slash her claws into a Chikorita. Her head turns to Chance and Maria expectantly, bending towards them with a deep frown.

“Ee…” Chance begins, and then a look of horror throws itself across his face. “Vee! Ee-vee!”

I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realize what’s going on. Eevee is exactly the same backwards and forwards. If a backwards name means something special, there’s absolutely no way for Chance or Maria to show that’s what they mean.

“Vee-Ee?” Chance tries, with a look on his face half hopeful and half afraid.

The Ursaring just bellows. She whips her claw up into the air and brings it back down with the force of a sledge hammer. And wedges itself into the ground where Chance was standing just a second before. I stuff his Pokéball back into my belt and look frantically towards Maria.

The dark-furred Eevee has begun to tremble uncontrollably.

“Ee. Ee. Ee,” she squeaks as the Ursaring tears out her claw and slowly turns her gaze.

“Elliot, you have to wake up!” I shout, shaking him frantically. “Wake up now!”

I pull Maria’s Pokéball out of his belt and stick it into his hand, but it’s no use. I have never hated pokéball security as much as I do at this very minute. Not only can I not return Maria to her Pokéball because the fingerprint detectors will refuse to recognize me as her owner, but the pokéball will refuse to even expand if the owner is unconscious. How the ball can even tell is a mystery to me, but a rarely-used feature intended to prevent thieves from releasing a person’s Pokémon while he’s asleep could now end up spelling our immediate death.

“Ee… ee…” Maria stutters.

The Ursaring’s eyebrows pull lower and lower with each sound, rapidly losing patience.

“Ee…” Maria stops to suck in one huge breath. “Eon! No-ee! No… No-ee!”

And now the Ursaring’s brow has lifted. She gestures with her arm as if to say, “Go on!”

But I’m not feeling any happier. Because Maria has just said the second half of the name that seals her fate. If she can’t backwards-say the other half, we’ll have a very angry Ursaring to deal with. And if she can, it will prove beyond a doubt that she’s reached the point of no return.

At the moment, I honestly don’t know which is worse.


	30. Inside the Clearing

“No-ee… Vee!” Maria says. She plants her foot on the firmly on the ground and stares up at the Ursaring as if challenging her to say this isn’t good enough.

“No. Ee. Vee.”

It’s not Umbreon backwards, it’s Eeveeon. Eevee plus the “eon” suffix that every evolved form of Eevee shares. Maria has reached the same in between stage that Serendipity is at. Not quite one Pokémon, but not quite the other, either. I don’t know if she’s reached the point of no return, but she has managed to make it clear that she’s saying her name backwards.

The Ursaring nods grudgingly and steps back.

“Elliot, are you ok?” I ask, hauling myself up on one arm to look down at him.

He’s still out cold, and, now that we seem to be out of any immediate danger, it makes me really, really mad.

Wincing from the pain in my left leg, I climb to my feet.

“Hey, Ursaring!”

Responding to my tone, she whips around just in time to miss the little group of teddy bears peek out from behind the bushes.

“Teddiursa!” they cry happily as two, three, four run up to their mother and wrap their tiny brown arms around her legs. Three bury their faces in her fur, but the fourth peeks out at me shyly. Little black eyes shine beneath the crescent moon marking on his forehead.

The mother bear looks at her little cubs and then at me, and, for the first time, I can see that she’s afraid.

“Ok,” I say, quickly backpedaling from my anger. “Alright. I’m not going to do anything to hurt them.”

The mother bear looks back at me gratefully. Then, she lowers her gigantic front paws and gently taps her children on the back one by one, as if to say, “Come on, let’s go.”

They walk off together slowly towards the center of the clearing, where I can see a mass of berry bushes surrounded by Pokémon of all kinds.

I turn back to see Chica, Maria, Chance, and Serendipity collapsed from exhaustion on the ground.

“You guys stay here with Elliot,” I say, as though that isn’t exactly what they were going to do anyway. “I’m going to take a closer look.”

Roughly following the path the Ursaring took, I make my way farther into the clearing. Now that we’ve made it past the mother Ursaring, the other Pokémon seem as though they don’t mind my presence at all. Even the fact that I’m hopping on one leg doesn’t seem to get their attention. They just continue their business as if nothing’s there.

I see baby Caterpie less than a foot long munching away on leaves as their Butterfree parents flock together overhead in a dance of butterfly wings. I see Teddiursa stretching to grab the highest berry on the bush as freshly hatched Paras peer out from beneath the shady branches. 

And most of all, I see nests. Patches of tall grass plucked from the ground and arranged to form pillows for multicolored eggs that mother Pokémon softly tend. As I pause to lean against a tree while I catch my breath, I see a small yellow and brown egg crack open to reveal a tiny Pichu who blinks in astonishment.

And then, at the base of a large tree near the perimeter, I see something that makes me gasp. A nest of grass and twigs containing nothing but two small dents where Pokémon eggs used to be. No shells, no remnants, no tiny babies resting, and the female Pidgeot is hopping around in circles.

“Gee, gee,” she coos to the little circles of empty grass. “Gee, gee.”

Where are you? she seems to be asking. Where did my little babies go? Come back!

And then I look over to the nest next door and see a Nidoqueen cradling an egg in each arm, rocking them softly from side to side. It’s a nice picture until a look at the ground reveals that there were originally four.

A second Nidoqueen walks up, and the first reluctantly hands over one of the eggs. Each hugs their lone egg to their chest as though they will never set it down again, and, together, they tilt back their heads and roar with anguish.

I bend down and trail my fingers lightly over the bandage on my leg. The Nidorino that gored me… Could the tiny Nidoran inside those eggs be his younger siblings? Is it any wonder he was so angry when the only thing that could have taken these eggs away is a human?

All the Pokémon in the forest are united to catch the egg thieves, and Elliot and I just got caught in the crossfire.

“Who did this to you?” I ask the Nidoqueen, and, as they look at me, I can see that they really wish that they could tell me.

But they don’t need to because, suddenly, the answer bursts into the clearing: two men and a Mr. Mime. They hold the eggs of Pidgey and Nidoran in their hands as they look around nervously. Somehow, they appear to be completely unscathed, missing even the passing claw marks of flying birds that Elliot collected all over his arms on our way here.

They back into the clearing as if looking for a place to hide, while their Mr. Mime holds up his hands like a man held at gunpoint. The mother Pokémon usher the children into the berry bushes at the center of the clearing while those whose eggs have yet to hatch stand guard over their nests, and all unleash a barrage of syllables that is undoubtedly even more backwards talk.

“Mime Ret-sim,” the Mr. Mime responds, but this time even the correct response fails to make an impact on the army of fathers and brothers that storms out of the woods.

A pair of Nidoking lead the charge, followed closely by a magnificently feathered Pidgeot who comes spiraling down through the air in a hawk-like dive. The Nidoking in front makes a rush for one of the men, and I cry out in horror. He’ll be killed by an attack of that force!

But instead of crashing into the man and crushing all his bones or spearing his long horn directly into his chest, the Nidoking smacks into an invisible barrier and falls to the ground, like a pigeon flying into a plate glass window.

Of course! The Mr. Mime is holding up an invisible wall to protect his trainer! Like the mimes in our world who use hand motions to trap themselves inside imaginary boxes, Mr. Mime the Pokémon is using his hands to indicate the presence of the wall, only Mr. Mime’s walls are not quite so imaginary. As a psychic Pokémon, Mr. Mime can form a protective box around himself and his trainer with just a few hand motions and a touch of psychic brain power.

As his comrade lies stunned, the second Nidoking throws back his head and swings his horn into the barrier like a sword, only to find his head snapping back the way it came with frightening speed. Overhead, the Pidgeot completes his dive, smashing beak first into an invisible ceiling that refuses to give way. He flutters past me on his way back up into the sky, and I note with alarm that his beak has sustained a long crack extending from the opening gap to the very top.

And now the mothers are joining in the charge, smashing into a second wall that extends behind. On all four sides, Pokémon are ramming themselves against the barrier, smashing, smashing, smashing, and they’re the only ones who are getting hurt.

The Nidoking bashes his horn into the barrier once more, and the resulting snap as it bounces off makes me think, for one terrifying second, that he’s broken his neck. And I’m sickened by the relief I feel when I discover that it was just a Stantler’s antler breaking off to leave a jagged stub.

“Stop it!” I screech. “STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!”

As I run into the throng of enraged Pokémon, I can’t even feel the pain in my leg anymore. It’s there, stronger than ever, but there are worse things on my mind.

“STOP!” I scream, but none of the Pokémon are even paying attention to me. They’ll never let me in, they’ll never even see me. They’ll just keep bashing their heads against a wall until they kill themselves. Well NOT TODAY!

I hear myself let loose a primal scream that could be caused by pain as equally as rage and launch myself off of the shell of a Wartortle, flying through the air until I land on the back of a lone Tropius. Snatching hold of his leaf-like wings, I use one as a rope to haul myself up his curved and sloping back. He turns his long, dinosaur-like head back in surprise, and I grab hold with both arms, using the momentum as he jerks back to swing myself up to the top. And there, from a position sitting atop his curving neck, I clap my hands down on either side of his head to shock him into motionlessness, and I spring into the air, using his head as a final stepping stool as I leap!

I land on my side with a heavy smash, but the even surface beneath me is not the ground. I’ve made it all the way to the top of the invisible box created by the Mr. Mime. Puffing for breath, I climb to my feet once more, as the men inside the box tilt their heads up towards the sky to gaze in astonishment at the sole of my right shoe and the bottom of my bare left foot and the Mr. Mime extends his hands up as if to reinforce his psychic ceiling against my weight.

“LISTEN TO ME!” I roar, and finally, miraculously, everything falls silent.


	31. Speech!

Everything falls silent. Standing atop the box of psychic energy made by the Mr. Mime, I slowly lift up my arms, drawing all eyes to me.

“Listen to me!” I repeat, looking down upon the enraged army of Pokémon pressing in on the box. “I know you’re angry. I know you’re desperate. And I know that you have a right to be. Those men in there stole your eggs! And it is your right and your duty to try to get them back.”

They roar in agreement, ready to charge, to attack, to rip the eggs away from the hands of the thieves.

“But I know something else!” I shout. “I know that taking turns banging your heads against a wall is NOT going to save those eggs!”

And now I have their full attention. The Pokémon lift their eyes to me, waiting expectantly. They know it’s coming.

“This box I’m standing on is not an ordinary box!” I stomp my foot for emphasis. “It’s not made of wood or brick, that you can knock down with a few strong blows! Even if it was made of solid steel, you would have made a dent in it by now through the awesome power of your combined strength. But this is a wall of the mind! As long as that Mr. Mime is generating it, these walls will hold to his specifications. And if he imagines that these walls are unbreakable, an attack by the legendary Pokémon themselves cannot bring them down!”

There are a few grumbles from the audience. Nidoking shuffles his feet impatiently, and, as his head shifts to the side, I catch sight of Elliot standing on the edge of the crowd, finally recovered from his knockout. A smile pulls at my lips as I continue.

“And now here I am, screaming at you about all the things you can’t do. What makes me any better, huh? What can I possibly do to solve your problem? I can’t throw a Thunderpunch. I can’t cause an earthquake. I can’t even breathe a little fire. I can’t manage a single one of the attacks that make you all so powerful. But none of that matters because attacks aren’t going to help us here.

“I can help you, and the reason I can help you isn’t because I’m stronger than you or even smarter than you. It’s because I can do the one thing that you can’t. I’m not going to fight them. I am going to talk to them.”

And now I pause. I pause to let them talk it over, to give them time to realize that this special human skill holds exactly what they need: the power to negotiate.

“Let me talk with these men, and I promise you that I will find a way to bring your eggs back to you!”

* * *

Have you ever gotten exactly what you asked for, only to find that you really, really wish that you had thought things through? Yeah, standing in front of the invisible psychic box while every single Pokémon in the forest is watching you like their lives depend on you is a whole lot more intimidating than I thought.

As I slowly approach the box, I can feel the pressure mounting. My heart is pounding, and it’s like I can feel the blood pumping its way through my body with each thump.

Finally, I’m close enough to clearly make out the features of the men inside. One is standing next to the Mr. Mime with his eyes shut tight. The other is eyeing me warily, as if trying to size me up. He glances briefly at the crowd of onlookers before turning back.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “They agreed to give us a little space.”

“How can you tell?” he asks coldly.

I stare at him. “What?”

“How can you tell they agreed to anything? Pokémon can’t talk.”

“They can talk perfectly well. We’re the ones who can’t understand them,” I shoot back.

Two sentences and I can already tell that I do not like this guy.

The guy just snorts. “Whatever you say. I don’t trust them.”

“Well,” I say with mounting anger, “you don’t have to trust them. The only one here you need to trust is me because I’m the one who’s going to get you out of this mess.”

“You’re going to get us out? Yeah, right.”

“I thought that you were on their side?” the second guy speaks up. His eyes are still squeezed shut, like he’s concentrating on something. His voice sounds out as though it took a special effort for him to think up the words.

“I’m on the side of everybody getting out of this in one piece,” I say. “And, unfortunately for you, that includes those Pokémon eggs you stole.”

“So, what?” the first guy asks. “You expect us to just hand them over?”

“I expect you to at least consider it. Come on, your Mr. Mime isn’t going to be able to hold this up forever. The walls have to come down sometime, and, when they do, the Pokémon are just going to take the eggs back.”

“Not if they hatch sometime before then,” the man counters.

Of course. They’re hoping for the eggs to hatch so that they can capture the baby Pokémon inside pokéballs before they’re strong enough to resist.

I grit my teeth to prevent myself from calling him a rather nasty name.

“Fine,” I spit. “But how long is that going to take? Are you really willing to risk it?”

“Can’t… hold out… much longer,” the second guy says.

I turn to him with surprise. “What is he doing?”

The first man waves his hand dismissively. “He’s a psychic trainer. They’re all a little whacko if you ask me.”

Of course! Most people who train psychic Pokémon are able to do so because they have some limited psychic powers themselves.

“You’re helping your Mr. Mime hold up the barrier?” I ask, hoping that the second man will be more reasonable than his friend.

“Yes,” he gasps.

“Must be hard work,” I say, noting the sweat on his face. “Why don’t you end this?”

“Can’t drop the barrier,” he replies.

“Why not?”

“Pokémon… they’ll kill us!”

I look back at the army of Pokémon surrounding us, and I can see his point. Many of them, particularly the Nidokings and the Pidgeots, look positively livid.

“What if I get them to promise that they won’t attack you?” I ask. “You drop the barrier, turn over the eggs, and we all get out of here safely.”

“Can’t… trust…” the man’s voice trails off and he lets out a soft groan. He’s looking more exhausted by the minute.

“Pokémon don’t lie,” I tell him firmly.

“Says who?” the first man asks derisively.

I look from the first man to the second, hardly believing this. They just won’t listen to reason!

“Ok, let’s try this,” I say. “You see that guy over there?”

I raise a hand and point to Elliot, who’s standing at a safe distance behind all the Pokémon, with Chica and the others at his side. To his credit, he doesn’t wave to me.

“That guy over there is the most powerful Pokémon trainer I have ever met.”

“Him?” The first man snorts.

“I’m not kidding you. Do you see how all the Pokémon are keeping their distance from him? Chikorita and the others? Those are my Pokémon. If he called out even one of his, every Pokémon in this clearing would be shaking in their boots.”

“They’re… not attacking him?” the second guy asks the first. Well, with his eyes squeezed shut like that, I’m not surprised that he can’t see for himself.

“He’s just standing there,” the first guy confirms.

“And you see the way he’s rubbing his head?” I ask. “Earlier today, an Ursaring took a swipe at him. Fought it off barehanded without another scratch.”

“I don’t believe it,” the first guy says, but he sounds a bit uncertain.

“Well, you just said, all these wild Pokémon can’t be trusted. You let down this barrier for just one second, and they’ll all come flying at you. That guy over there?” I pause to turn and give him a wave. This time, he does wave back. “He’s my friend. I’m here under his protection, and that is the only reason that I’m standing here talking to you right now instead of running for my life.”

“What if… the truth?” asks the second man.

“Well, so what?” the first guy asks, sounding a bit nervous. “So what if he is some kind of powerful trainer? How does that affect us?”

“It affects you because if he can keep the wild Pokémon from attacking me, then he can do the same for you.”

And, just like with the Pokémon, I pause to let that sink in.

“All we do is drop the barrier?” the first man confirms.

“And hand over the eggs to him. The wild Pokémon will get the message. And if they don’t, he’ll call out his strongest Pokémon and let that do all the talking.”

“No… choice.”

The first man looks briefly at the second, and then back to me. “Alright. But I need to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, you got that?”

“Got it,” I agree. “I’ll send him right over.”

I turn and begin walking back to Elliot, but before I get two steps, I get a painful reminder of my temporarily forgotten leg wound. It’s leaking blood. Like crazy. Sometime in all that jumping around I must have exacerbated the injury.

“That’s not good,” I think dimly, but there’s no time to do anything about it now.

“Elliot!” I say, finally reaching him. “Am I glad to see you awake.”

“You were really that worried about me?” Elliot asks.

“Oh, well, I was referring more to the fact that I need your help right now,” I reply awkwardly. “I may or may not have told the Pokémon egg thieves that you’re the most powerful trainer in the world…”


	32. The Most Powerful Trainer in the World

“So, let me get this straight. All I have to do is walk over there, and they’ll just drop their psychic barrier and hand me the eggs?” Elliot asks.

“Yes.” I nod. “Oh, and try to walk confidently. You know, not like how you usually walk.”

“What’s wrong with how I usually walk?”

“And don’t be friendly with them. Try to make it seem like you’re angry. No, annoyed! Because you don’t see them as any kind of real threat, but they are wasting your time.”

“So, basically, act like a pompous jerk?”

“Yeah, that should work.”

Elliot says nothing, but he does look incredibly skeptical.

“Oh, just get over there!” I say, giving him a push.

I step forward with the plan of walking on ahead to lead the way, but, instead, I find myself falling to the ground. Suddenly, I feel inexplicably weak.

“What?” I manage to say feebly as I try to push myself back up with my hands.

Elliot looks down at me with concern. “I think you need to stay here.”

“But…”

“No buts!” he shouts. “I am the most powerful Pokémon trainer in the world, and you will do exactly what I say!”

And then he winks at me and strolls off towards the box with just the right amount of swagger.

Well. How can I argue with that? Besides, I’m beginning to feel a bit lightheaded.

“Chika?” Chica asks, examining my face closely.

“I’m fine, Chica,” I say, but somehow the words don’t sound exactly right.

Chica turns to Serendipity and asks her something.

“Chan,” she says, shaking her head sadly.

As it did when she was first treating my wound, her egg begins to glow, but the light fades just as quickly, like a candle that’s been snuffed out. I guess that means that all her magical healing powers are used up.

I’m starting to grow concerned about my inability to stand back up. I was absolutely fine just a minute ago. Wasn’t I?

As they lean over me, Chica and Serendipity’s faces start to swim. I blink hard.

“Vee?” Maria asks Serendipity, taking a step closer.

Chance is sitting the farthest away from me, but he’s still sticking pretty close by. He looks as if he’s trying to be tough and unconcerned, but he can’t help himself. I remember how he stuck up for me when I got in trouble with the police in Cerulean City, and I smile. We’ve been paying so much attention to Maria lately, but he’s never complained or gotten jealous of his sister.

He’s a good Pokémon. They all are. And when we finally get out of these woods, I’m going to show them how much I appreciate them.

And now there’s a shout of triumph echoing all around. The crowd of Pokémon parts to reveal Elliot striding forward with four Pokémon eggs hugged tightly in his arms. The psychic box is gone, the open rectangular area it made now filled with Elliot’s admiring supporters. There’s no sign of the thieves, and I wonder briefly where they’ve gone until I catch a glimpse of wavering branches in the forest beyond the clearing. They must be running for their lives.

One by one, Elliot places the eggs back into the nests of their anxious mothers, and the fathers swoop in close behind. Nidoking embraces Nidoqueen, Pidgeots affectionately rub heads, and the entire community looks overjoyed to find that their nightmare has finally ended.

At this point, things grow a little foggy for me, and, when I regain my focus, I find that Elliot is speaking to me.

“I told the Pokémon to let them go,” he says, obviously referring to the thieves. “The police will catch up with them eventually.”

I nod blearily.

“Now,” he says, bending down to take my hand in his, “let’s get you out of here.”

He pulls me to my feet, and I begin to sway, even while leaning on him heavily.

“Elliot,” I say, “I’m not sure I can walk any farther.”

“Of course you can,” he says obstinately. “It’s not far now.”

“But with me slowing you down, it’ll take us hours. And what about Maria? She doesn’t have that time to spare.”

“Maria?” Elliot asks. “Say ‘Eevee’ for me.”

“Eevee,” Maria says easily.

“Now say ‘Eeveeon’,” I prompt.

“Eeveeon,” she admits grudgingly.

“You don’t have any time to lose.” I pull myself away from Elliot and sit back down on the grass. “As soon as she gets to saying the ‘umber’ part, it’ll be too late for her. Go on ahead without me.”

“No,” Elliot says stubbornly.

“Elliot, Maria’s counting on you. Just go.”

“No!” he says more loudly. “You’ve been hurt. I need to get you to the hospital.”

“I’ll be fine,” I insist, putting a hand to my head to offset a sudden bout of dizziness. “I just need some rest, that’s all. And what about you? I seem to remember that you were knocked unconscious for at least five minutes. Go take care of yourself and Maria. You can probably get there and back again in half the time it would take me to walk there in this condition. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

“No!” Elliot repeats. “You are my friend, and I am not leaving you in the middle of the woods to slowly bleed to death! Maybe you don’t get this, but I care about what happens to you, and if I have to—“

“Pidge?”

Elliot breaks off his tirade abruptly, looking rather flustered as he spins around to find the source of the tap on his shoulder.

“Pidgeot,” the bird says smugly, spreading its wings wide in an imitation of flight.

“You’re… offering us a ride?”

Although Pidgeots have nothing but a large pink beak, I could swear that he’s smiling as he nods his head.

“Well.” Elliot’s cheeks grow red, as though he’s embarrassed that he never thought of that.

“Well, then, I don’t want to hear any more arguments out of you,” he says sternly. “Get on that bird right now!”

“Ok, ok.” I pull out my pokéballs one by one to return Chica, Serendipity, and Chance before staggering back to my feet.

The Pidgeot lowers himself graciously to the ground, supporting me gently with his wing as I climb onto his back.

For the first time since we entered the woods, Maria consents to returning to her own Pokéball, and Elliot climbs on behind me, pushing aside the long red and yellow feathers that extend from Pidgeot’s head. I lay down wearily, wrapping my arms around the Pidgeot’s neck and burying my face in his soft brown feathers.

And then we take off, Pidgeot’s wings flapping hard as he pulls us up into the sky. And, in spite of everything that’s just happened, in spite of the fact that he was angry and upset just a minute ago, Elliot cries out joyfully as we clear the tops of the trees and begin to soar.

“Woo hoo!” he shouts, and I feel his weight shifting behind me as though he’s just lifted both his arms into the air. “This is SO AWESOME!”


	33. Storytelling

Relaxing in bed, propped up by clean white pillows, I feel more comfortable than I ever have in my whole life. The bedside table is full of flowers and cards from the staff, and on the opposite side, Chica, Serendipity, and Chance are all clustered into a group around Maria as she chatters on happily. Even Unicorn and Elliot’s Magikarp Harry are listening closely from the large fish tank along the wall.

Yes, Elliot named his Magikarp Harry.

“What kind of name is that?” I asked him. “It doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Sure it does,” he argued. “Harry the Magikarp.”

And then he waved his hand up and down in front of the tank as though that explained everything. Well, at least Unicorn seems happy to have a friend. Or just someone he can actually interact with.

I don’t know what Maria is saying as she gestures expressively with her ears paws and tail, but I like to imagine that she’s retelling the story of her trip to the Celadon department store.

Elliot told me what had happened as soon as the nurses said I was ready to have visitors.

After dropping me off at the hospital, the Pidgeot that flew us here whisked Elliot and Maria off to the department store, where they rushed upstairs, hoping that it wasn’t too late to buy an evolutionary stone that would change Maria’s evolutionary path.

As they burst into the store, she had just started to vocalize a few halting “Uh” sounds. Luckily, the evolutionary stones were all out on display inside a large glass case at the store counter.

By talking to the store clerk, Elliot quickly managed to spread the full selection of stones out on the floor in front of Maria. In order to prevent the radiation from leaking out, each stone was carefully sealed within a small black box, with only a picture on top identifying what was inside.

A water stone for Vaporeon. A fire stone for Flareon. A thunder stone for Jolteon. A leaf stone for Leafeon. A sun stone for Espeon. And a moon stone for Umbreon, just in case Maria should change her mind about not wanting to become one.

“Yeah, I told the clerk that one was pointless,” Elliot told me, rolling his eyes.

Still, the option remained. Six stones spread out across the floor, with Maria staring down at them. Elliot told her that she could pick whichever one she wanted, although he later confided in me that he was secretly hoping for Vaporeon.

But, with her last seconds ticking away, Maria made no move towards any of these stones. She sat, staring at each in turn, until, finally, she looked up at the store clerk as if trying to ask her for something.

“These are all the stones we have,” she said. “Unless…”

And then she reached down under the cash register and pulled out a second box emblazoned with the image of a fire stone.

“This,” she said, “is a tiny fragment of the ice rock from Sinnoh’s Snowpoint City. It’s the only one available in the entire region, and it’s not for sale. However, for a fee equal to the price of the other stones, I can let you borrow it for in-store use.”

“You mean you’ll open it up so she can touch it?” Elliot asked.

One nod was all it took. Elliot laid down the money, Maria bounced forward eagerly, and the rest in history.

As she sits here telling the story, it is all too evident that she’s fully completed the transformation. Light blue fur, long diamond-shaped ears, and paper-flat tail all suit her perfectly. Now, I can’t imagine her ever being anything but a Glaceon.

If any signs of her almost-evolution to Umbreon are present, they’re so small as to be almost completely unnoticeable: a slight shading in the fur, a faint yellow circle that only shows up on the darker blue portion of her forehead in the middle of the darkest nights, a newfound love for moonlight. None seem to be of any great concern to her.

They say that I’ll be able to leave the hospital soon, and when I do, the first thing I’m going to do is take Chance over to the shop to let him pick out whatever stone he wants. I’m not going to rush him, but this way it will be there for him whenever he’s ready.

I’ve had a long time to think while I’ve been lying here in bed, waiting for my wound to heal, but somehow, I keep coming back to just one thing. What Elliot told me right before we left the woods: “I’m your friend. I care about what happens to you.”

I’ve never had a human friend before. Back in the real world, there were people who said they were my friends, but they were just a bunch of liars.

But Elliot… he saved my life back there.

And now I find myself smiling as he walks into the room.

“Hey, Elliot, I—“

“When were you going to tell me about this?” he demands, completely interrupting me.

My good mood evaporates as I take in his posture: leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed and an angry frown, as if making a it a point to show that he doesn’t intend to come one step closer. Abandoning my pillowed backrest, I sit up straight to give him my full attention.

“Tell you about what?” I ask, and, for once I’m not one bit confrontational. The only thing I’m trying to voice is my honest confusion.

“The Safari Zone Warden just called looking for you,” he replies acidly. “He’s finally found a buyer for your house in Fuchsia City. He told me that he hopes it’s not too late for you to get that new house you’ve set your eye on. In Pewter City.

“So,” he repeats, “when were you going to tell me about this?”

“I was going to tell you,” I insist. “It’s just that you were so worried about Maria, and then all that crazy stuff happened, and none of it was even final yet, anyway, and…”

“Forget it,” Elliot says, shaking his head. “Just forget it. I’ll catch up with you later.”

He returns Harry to his pokéball and walks out the door. Maria bounds after him, casting one last sorrowful look back at my Pokémon.

I collapse back onto my pillows just as the nurse walks in.

“Are you ready to leave?” she asks cheerily.

“Yes,” I reply. I give her my best fake smile, but, somehow, I get the feeling that even she isn’t fooled.

* * *

After a bit of wandering around, I find Elliot on the northern edge of the city, just steps away from the first trees of the forest.

“To Pewter City?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I reply, and we set off without another word.

Not even Maria and Chica are talking as we slowly retrace the path we took to get here. On doctor’s orders, I’m trying to take it as easy as possible, but Elliot seems determined to march forward as though I’m not even here. The distance between us grows slowly larger and larger, until, finally, I’m just fed up with it.

“Look,” I say loudly, “I don’t know why you’re so angry about this. It’s not like I’m making you come along. You said that you wanted to go back to Pewter City, too. Or did you change your mind?”

And then, like some kind of magic, Elliot stops. He just stands completely still like he’s been hit with a Thunder Wave.

And that makes me start to wonder. Why did he want to go back to Pewter City, anyway? He never really said.

With Elliot in his state of paralysis, it takes me very little time to catch back up with him.

“Well?” I ask. “Do you still want to go to Pewter City or not?”

“I guess that where I want to go is my own business now,” he says softly.

“I guess so,” I reply, knowing that what he really means is that this is it. I’ll settle down in Pewter City and Elliot will go off traveling wherever he wants to go. We’re splitting up.

As we walk on, it grows silent between us once more, but this time I know that it’s because we’re both lost in our own thoughts. I try to tell myself that this is exactly what I wanted. I set out on this journey to find a place worth living in. Get out of Fuchsia City, that’s all I wanted. And Pewter City is definitely the coolest city I’ve ever seen.

Why should it upset me to think that I won’t be traveling around with Elliot anymore? I never wanted him along in the first place. He’s a stupid, annoying idiot, and he causes nothing but trouble at every single turn. I should be glad to be rid of him.

“Chikaah?” Chica asks me.

“Sure, Chica, I’m fine,” I say.

Why shouldn’t I be fine? Our journey is coming to an end, and I’m getting everything I ever wanted.


	34. A Fast-Approaching End

“So,” I say, awkwardly breaking the two day long silence, “I guess we should start thinking about what we’re going to do when we get back to the city.”

It’s getting close now; I can feel it. Just one more hour, or less, and we leave this forest behind. As long as Elliot and I were headed for a common destination, there was an unspoken agreement that we would stay together, but I can feel that the minute we step out of this forest, everything will break apart.

“Yeah, I guess we should,” Elliot agrees, looking down at the small stream between us.

Down in the water, Unicorn and Harry are having a grand old time. Or at least Unicorn is. Harry is swimming stoutly along in his Magikarp fashion like a soldier on the march. Unicorn is gliding along beside him, fins flowing gracefully as though he’s happy as a clam, and then, every once in a while, he gets a mischievous gleam in that huge black eye. He gradually slows his pace until he slips just out of Harry’s sight, and then he jabs Harry in the side, horn bouncing off of rock-hard scale, and speeds back into position before the Magikarp can realize what happened.

“Magi karp?” Harry trails his head from side to side in confusion, but Unicorn merely curls his fishy lips up into a pleasant smile.

On my side of the stream, Chica covers her mouth with her leaf in an attempt to stifle a giggle. Maria, who is attempting to do the same, locks eyes with her across the water and they both burst out into laughter.

Harry floats onto his side, trying stupidly to figure out what all of the commotion is up there. The sight of a Magikarp trying to swim sideways is just too much. Now even Elliot and I are laughing, and Unicorn is releasing a stream of great bubbles that gurgle joyfully when they reach the surface.

“Elliot,” I say between my laughs, “you sure know how to pick ‘em.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You picked a Pokémon,” I gasp out another round of laughs, “almost as stupid as you are!”

“’Almost’ huh?” he asks, raising an eyebrow over his wide smile. “Well, maybe if your Seaking would stop picking on him…”

At his trainer’s words, a spark of thought finally flashes across the Magikarp’s blank face. He quickly flips himself back over, turns on Unicorn, and begins to execute a Splash attack.

“Magi karp, karp, karp. Magi karp, karp, karp,” he chants, bobbing up and down on the surface of the water.

Unicorn remains in place, allowing the resultant ripples to carry him up and down like a series of gentle waves. He catches my eye and gives me a look that says, “Is this guy serious?”

Apparently finished now, Harry descends back into the water with a satisfied smile and a proud flip of his tail and continues swimming downstream.

And now we’re laughing at Unicorn, who looks absolutely dumbfounded by the smug display. Finally shaking his head, he swims after him.

When we’ve finally begun to breathe normally again, Elliot says, “Are you sure you want to leave all this?”

And suddenly I feel serious again.

“Elliot, all I ever wanted was to find a place where I could live happily. I never wanted an adventure or a quest or even a mission of any kind. I just want to live my life.”

“And you’re sure that Pewter City is that place?”

“I know I could be happy there,” I say simply.

“Well, what about Dr. Clark?” Elliot asks, sounding as though he’s simply casting around for an excuse. “He’s upset with us to start with because we didn’t call him when Maria started saying ‘eon’. ‘A gap in my observational record’ he called it. And you always said you wanted to avoid that guy.”

“Well, I still think he’s suspicious of us, but I can handle myself around him. He’ll never really get any proof that we’re from the real world and not the Pokémon one.”

“I really do like it there,” I continue. “I bet that you’d like it too if you gave it a chance. You could, I don’t know, stick around for a while, just to give it a shot. It’s the one city I’ve seen in this place that’s anything like a city in the real world.”

Elliot looks back at me with an expression on his face that seems poised to deliver some difficult news. He looks almost sad as he opens his mouth to speak.

“Aha! Aha!”

Elliot, the Pokémon, and I all simultaneously jump into the air about five feet as Dr. Clark leaps out onto the path.

“I knew that you were from another world!” he exclaims. “I saw it all along, and now you have finally provided me with the proof!”

As I stare in amazement at the sudden appearance of the zoologist, the only thing that I can say is: “Seriously? You hid behind a tree?! Who hides behind a tree?”

And then, just to put the icing on the cake of absurdity, Elliot looks at me and meekly raises his hand.


	35. They All Lived Happily Ever After?

“Elliot, you’re not helping!” I protest.

“Sorry,” he says, lowering his hand. “But I’d just like to point out that when I hid behind a tree, you told me it was ‘only the most obvious hiding place in the world’. Then why in the Poké world didn’t you see him?”

He jabs a finger at the beaming scientist who stands before us in a pristine white lab coat that sticks out like a sore thumb against the browns and greens of the forest.

It’s a rhetorical question, but the irony certainly is not lost on me, nor is the fact that, after all of my warnings to Elliot, I was the one who gave us away in the end.

“I see you’re not attempting to deny what you said,” Dr. Clark remarks. “Very good, it will make this much easier.”

“You’re not doing anything with us,” I say angrily. “If you even try sticking us in some mental institution, I’ll have my Chikorita slice your head off!”

“Unless my Glaceon turns you into a living popsicle first,” Elliot threatens, narrowing his eyes.

Chica and Maria begin inching towards him menacingly.

“Wait! Wait!” he says, throwing up his arms in a gesture of surrender. “I have no intentions of throwing you into a mental institution!”

“And how do we know that?” I demand, crossing my arms.

“Listen to me,” he says, eyeing Maria nervously as she leaps across the stream. “I have no intentions of doing such a thing because I don’t believe you to be crazy. I am in full confidence that you have come from another world.”

“So you want to turn us into some sort of freak show? Run a series of experiments on us?”

“No! No!” I can see the sweat dripping down his forehead as our Pokémon step ever closer. “Of course not!”

“What do you want, then?” Elliot asks, sounding almost curious.

“I just want to speak with you about it!”

“Why would you want that?” I ask suspiciously.

Chica and Maria halt half a foot in front of the scientist, turning their heads back, they await the order to attack.

“Because I’ve been trying to locate someone from the real world for the past six months!” he finally bursts out.

“I don’t—“

“Wait,” I tell Elliot, holding up one hand as a signal for the Pokémon to do the same.

I look at Dr. Clark’s face very carefully as I ask, “Did you just say ‘the real world’?”

“Yes,” he says, nearly collapsing with relief. “If you would have only given me the time to tell you, I would have informed you that I also am from a world other than the one we stand in.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Elliot asks in exasperation. “It could have saved everyone a lot of trouble if you’d just told us that we’re all from the same place!”

“Actually, I am not entirely certain that we all come from the same world,” Dr. Clark replies. “Scientifically speaking, it is completely plausible that there may be multiple parallel worlds which connect to this one. Based upon my observations, I believe that the two of you come from a world which contains just a few minor differences to this one, including the evolutionary path of Eevee. It would certainly explain your confusion upon finding that the Umbreon evolution resulted from exposure to a moonstone. I, myself, on the other hand, come from a world which contains creatures known as ‘animals’ rather than creatures known as—“

“Hey, Doc!” I cut in. “We do come from a world with animals. And I’m guessing that you didn’t actually ‘invent’ that cell phone, either, which means we’re from the same world, dude.”

“You knew how to use my cellular phone?” he exclaims, as though this is the biggest surprise he’s heard all day. “Your acting skills must be remarkable.”

Elliot and I exchange a look. No. No, they really weren’t.

“I don’t believe it,” Dr. Clark says.

Elliot swings his bag off of his shoulders and pulls something out of it.

“Here, catch,” he says, tossing it across the stream.

Dr. Clark catches the small red object and flips it open. “You have an actual cell phone?” he asks. “It took me months of experimentation with the available materials to reinvent the cell phone! With this, I could have made the necessary modifications within a day!”

“That’s very impressive, Doc, but I think we’re getting off track here,” I point out.

“Yes, yes, of course. Well then, as it appears we arrived here from the identical parallel world after all, there is much for us to discuss. I would like to know everything that you know about how you arrived here and any relevant observations you might have made regarding your experience.”

“Why?” Elliot asks. “Are you trying to get back?”

“Get back?” Dr. Clark asks in surprise. “Of course not! For a zoologist, this world offers the opportunity of a lifetime! I’m merely exercising my natural scientific curiosity.”

“Oh, is that all,” I say, rolling my eyes. “In that case, you should talk to Elliot. I’m sure he’ll be happy to tell you all you want to know and more.”

“Hey!” Elliot says, noting my light jab. “I do not talk that much. But, sure, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, Dr. Clark. You see it all started on a normal day. I woke up, poured myself a bowl of Lucky Charms, and…”

“We’d better start walking,” I say to Chica quietly, “or it’s going to be a long way back to Pewter City.”

* * *

“There,” Dr. Clark says, putting down the screwdriver. “I’ve finished making the modifications. Your cell phone should be able to make and receive calls now.”

He picks up the small red phone and hands it to Elliot, who punches in the test number. At the far end of the lab, something goes “Ring, ring, ring!”

“It works!” Elliot says, beaming.

“Hey, Doc, you better be planning to make me one of those,” I say.

He looks at me curiously. “Are you unwilling to share one with Elliot?”

Oh, I realize. He must not have overheard enough of our conversation to know our plans.

“Actually, Elliot and I will be going our separate ways. I’m going to be staying here in Pewter City, and Elliot’s going to keep travelling.” I look over at Elliot. “Unless you changed your mind about sticking around for a while…?”

Elliot sighs. “Alright, I guess it’s now or never.”

“Chika?” Chica asks in confusion.

He continues with difficulty. “When I found out about your plans, I probably shouldn’t have gotten as mad as I did. You told me way back that you were just looking for a place where you could live without getting bored out of your mind, so, it’s not like I wasn’t expecting it to happen sometime. And…” He pauses to take a deep breath. “More importantly, I shouldn’t have been so harsh because I’ve been keeping a secret, too.”

“You’ve been keeping a secret?” I ask in disbelief.

“Yeah,” he admits. “I’ve been planning something, too, planning it all along, really, but I just didn’t know how to tell you. I know how you feel about battling, but I want to do it. I want to win all eight badges and enter the tournament. And I want to win.”

“You came back to Pewter City to challenge Brock,” I realize, naming the rock type gym leader who’s notorious for being the easiest one to beat.

“Yeah.”

A smile slowly creeps over my face. Elliot has been standing there looking so serious, but now he notes my expression with confusion.

“Seriously, Elliot? Seriously?” I demand. “Out of all the cliché moves in the book, you have to go and pick the biggest one there is!”

“I guess it’s just in my nature,” Elliot shrugs, returning the smile. “I’m a hopeless case.”

“Well, don’t let me stop you. Go on and challenge him! We’ll still be here when you get back.”

“Ok!” Elliot says, and I can see his excitement building by the second. “Let’s go, Maria!”

He rushes towards the door, only to stop and turn abruptly with a harsh squeak of his shoes just before the doorway.

“Oh,” he says, “um, I was going to ask you for a favor first. Is there any chance that I could borrow Unicorn? I mean, Harry’s great and all, but he doesn’t know anything except Splash. I’ll trade you back as soon as the battle’s over, I promise!”

“Isn’t that cheating?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

He opens his mouth to protest.

“Kidding!” I say, cutting him off. “Go ahead. It’s the least I can do.”

As we make our way to the Pokémon Center to find a machine that can make the temporary trade, I try to keep the atmosphere as light as possible. I don’t want to part with Elliot on bad terms. There’s no reason to make this any harder than it needs to be.

That’s my reason. Or at least part of it. The other part is that I don’t want to admit how much I’m going to miss him. He’s the only human friend I’ve ever had, and I never really understood how much that meant until now.

I thought that I was better off on my own, that he would just be some annoying pest who would get in my way and cause problems at every turn. And he certainly did cause his fair share of trouble. He stepped on Chica, pulled me into a double battle I told him not to start, lost Maria, got me arrested, and almost gave away our secret so many times that I lost track of the times I had to cover for us. And he never stopped talking.

But that annoying persistence of his somehow grew on me. I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere along the way he stopped being a burden that I couldn’t shake and became a friend. And now the thought of going back to something like the life I had before feels… empty.

But I can’t let him know that. I’ve got to be strong on my own. I don’t need anyone else, and I can’t afford to have them start thinking that I do. After Elliot leaves, it’ll hurt for a while, but that will be just one more secret to lock up deep inside with the rest of the secrets about me, the secrets from my past, all the things that Elliot kept poking at when they’re no one’s business but my own. It’s just safer this way.

So I send Elliot off to his gym battle with a wave and a smile even though inside, there’s a small part of me that wants to cry.

* * *

“You’re sure you’re ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Elliot replies. “One gym badge down, seven to go.”

After he won the battle yesterday (Unicorn’s Water Pulse turned it into child’s play), I helped Elliot spend his prize money on all the things he’d need to travel on alone and then we stopped to chat with Dr. Clark and by the time that had ended it was much too late to do anything other than check into the Pokémon Center for the night. But now it’s morning. No more stalling. We might as well just get it over with.

Elliot hauls his backpack up onto his shoulders and turns toward the lobby doors.

“You’ve got my cell phone number in case you want to reach me,” he says.

“Are you sure you won’t be the one using it to call me in to save you from whatever trouble you get yourself into this time?”

“Hey! I can handle myself.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes,” he says emphatically. “I know a lot more than I did when we first met, you know. And I’ve gotten stronger. Maria should be able to handle any Pokémon between here and Cerulean City, and by the time I get there she’ll be even better.”

“I guess you’re right,” I admit.

Elliot looks up at the clock on the wall. “We’d better get going if we want to get to the Pokémon Center outside Mt. Moon by nightfall.”

Maria nods sadly.

“Rita.”

“See.”

“Vee.”

Chika, Serendipity, and Chance take turns saying their goodbyes.

“Ceon,” Maria replies.

“Bye,” Elliot says.

“Bye,” I finish. It doesn’t feel like enough, but there’s nothing else to say.

I watch as Elliot walks out the sliding glass doors, Maria marching along beside him, and then I turn back to my Pokémon.

“Well, guys,” I say with false cheerfulness, “who’s ready to start looking for a house?”

Chance’s ears droop. Serendipity looks down at the floor.

“Chikar.”

“Sorry, Chica, that’s it. What else did you expect?” I ask.

In response, Chica simply tilts back her head and stares at me intensely.

“We’ll all be happy here in time,” I insist.

She keeps staring.

“We’ll like it better than travelling around.”

Still stares. And now Chance is looking up at me, too, as if calling me out on my lie.

“Ok,” I admit. “So maybe I like travelling with Elliot, but it was never really going to work out, not forever. Something was going to go wrong eventually, it always does, and then what? I just can’t do it. All my life, whenever I’ve tried to be nice to someone, whenever I’ve tried to make a friend, it has always, always come back to burn me. It hurts enough now, imagine what it would be like if things really fell apart. If I stay here, everything will be perfectly fine. I know that I could like it here if I just give it a little time. Safe. Easy. No risks.”

Chica’s stare has morphed into an expression of deep concern.

“So maybe I’ve got a few issues,” I say uncomfortably. “I can’t really help that. I just can’t do it, ok?”

“Bliss?” Serendipity asks, and I realize that it’s the first time she’s ever said that. She’s finally a Blissey.

Bliss. It means perfect happiness. Not just fine, real, true joy, the kind that, if I’m being honest with myself, I know that I’ll never be able to find by just playing it safe. If I stay here, I’m sure that I could be content, but I will never be blissful.

“Serendipity,” I say, “I knew that I would need you for this journey.”

And then I’m out the door, sprinting for everything I’ve got.

“Chika!” I hear behind me, and suddenly my partner is racing along at my side. The two of us together, just the way it started.

I see him from a long way off. “Elliot! Wait up!” I shout, and he turns around with surprise.

I stop in front of him and take a couple breaths.

“I grew up in foster care.”

“What?” He looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

“I never knew my parents. I grew up in foster care from the time when I was too little to remember until I got transported here a year ago. They kept moving me around from place to place, and I never made any friends.”

“I still don’t understand…”

“You said that you wanted to know just one thing about me. There it is.”

Elliot opens his mouth, but he’s completely speechless.

“I can’t tell you my name because I don’t know it, but now you know where I came from and you know what kind of person I am, and now you know that… I want to come along with you.”

Elliot is standing completely still, his eyes bugged out so much that I’m afraid they’re going to pop out like a Venomoth’s.

“Come on,” I smile. “Is that any way to accept a request?”

“I’ll tell you something about accepting a request,” he says.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

I turn around to see that Chance and Serendipity are finally catching up. I pull out their pokéballs and return them before walking forward confidently.

“Ok, then,” Elliot says in a tone of voice that suggests he’s still half unbelieving. “On to Mt. Moon.”

He starts walking as if to lead the way.

“Oh, and Elliot?” I say, speeding up to overtake him. “I’m still in charge.”


End file.
